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1 ^^'(^ 




PRESIDENT WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING. 



WABREN GAMALIEL HARDIIg 

President of the United States 



A REVIEW OF FACTS 
COLLECTED FROM 



Anthropological, Historical and 
Political Researches 



-BY- 



William Estabrook Chancellor 

FORMERLY 

Professor of Economics, Politics and Social Science of 
Wooster College, Wooster, Ohio 



This book is sold and distributed by agents only. 



THE SENTINAL PRESS 



m -^^, 



I '' -- 



It is a biological, likewise a psychologies! fallacy to 
assume that human traits admit of any abrupt adapta- 
tion to new environments or laws of physical or mental 
operation. 



The Sentinel Press has acquired unreserved legal 
title to my original papers relating to my investiga- 
tions into the ancestry and life of President Warren 
G. Harding. Such references as may be made to me 
as the source of information concerning facts there- 
in should be credited as authentic. 



PUBLISHER'S PREFACE 

"The whole destiny of the world falls on President 
Harding's leadership; the fate of white civilization 
hangs in the crisis." 

This is the startling assertion of Sir Philip Gibbs, 
the 'distinguished war correspondent, in a recent analy- 
sis of world conditions. 

The very thought bids us pause. Undoubtedly the 
times are out of joint and a blind, selfish or false lead- 
ership will be calamitous indeed. 

It is proposed to discuss the inherited and acquired 
traits of President Harding and those of some of his 
intimate advisers that the reader may know as he 
should be advised as to the kind of leadership that is 
now directing our destiny. Our story is also as an 
exoneration and vindication of Professor William Esta- 
brook Chancellor upon whose investigations and writ- 
ings the facts herein stated are based as is also much 
of the form of statement. 

After reading these pages let the hesitant reader 
consider that selfish fear has closed the lips of many 
who, with Professor Chancellor, investigated and know 
the fadts of the President's ancestry. It should not be 
forgotten that the tradition charging fusion of races is 
over one hundred years old and that legal proof of the 
existence of such tradition is over seventy years old 
and was presented as evidence in the Butler murder 
case in the courts of Morrow, President Harding's 
native county, by one of the most distinguished Re- 
publican lawyers and leaders in the history of Ohio, 
Columbus Delano, who was Secretary of the Interior 
under President Grant. Living witnesses also are to 
be found who testify as to the tradition. But why in- 

7 



s 

deed hesitate when living witnesses will testify, as 
they have done, that they have heard the father of the 
President admit he is not of pure white blood. Most 
of all, let the reader remember that only scientific 
measurements and study of mental characteristics will 
be conclusive in these matters. All other testimony 
must be questioned in motives — of pride, prejudice or 
expediency. The challenge is here made to submit the 
Harding case to the test of exact science. 

The most humiliating and fearful fact confronting 
the reader is the attempt on the part of the friends of 
the President and the Republican leaders through the 
agents of the Postoffice Department and the personal 
representative of H. IvI. Daugherty to suppress the pub- 
lication of the facts by intimidating Professor Chancel- 
lor by use of an alleged warrant which he was as- 
sured would be quashed if ha would destroy his manu- 
scripts on the Harding Biography. 

Thus a man who has written the recognized work 
dealing exclusively with the lives of the Presidents, 
which work includes an account of them all except 
Woodrow Wilson, is now forbidden on principle of lese 
majeste from revising his work on the Lives of the 
Presidents. Why ? 

The publisher has many reliable reasons for believ- 
ing that the Republican leaders know that the state- 
ments of Professor Chancellor and others concerning 
the ancestry of the President are true and that the 
activity at suppression is due to the fear that the party 
will be rebuked at last for its imposition upon the 
American people. 

On March 30th, 1921, Carl D. Ruth, Washington 
correspondent of the Cleveland News, owned by Dan 
Hanna, in a message to that paper calls attention to 
reprisals that were to be made against Democrats for 
circulating scurrilous reports reflecting on the ances- 



9 

try of President Harding. This threat was repeated 
in the same paper on three or more occasions as the de- 
termined policy of Senator Willis, of Ohio. 

Evidently the plan was abandoned after wise reflec- 
tion for at a later date the same Carl D. Ruth sent a 
message advising the News readers that the whole plan 
had been changed. 

On March 9th, another Washington correspondent, 
Charles E. Morris, former private secretary of Gov- 
ernor James M. Cox, in a message to the Dayton News 
writes: "Since conferences here between Governor 
Myron T. Herrick, Howard Mannington, President 
Harding, former President William Howard Taft, Wal- 
ter F. Brown, and others, there has been an abandon- 
ment of the policy of making vicarious sacrifices of a 
few Democratic office holders in Ohio — postmasters 
and internal revenue collectors — who were to be given 
the opportunity for immediate resignation in lieu of 
the more embarrassing experience of being summarily 
fired 'for having engaged in scurrilous propaganda' 
during the campagn." 

"Requests for resignations have been made, and 
the requests may be met, but these particular charges 
are not to be pressed, since it has become known that 
the victims will fight back, and the fight may result 
in exposures decidedly embarrassing to several men 
now high in the councils of the party, members of the 
official family, personal counsellors, and even men who 
have in the past week figured in the gossip as 
recipients of the highest favors the President has to 
bestow. For a time it was assumed that the so-called 
'offensive propaganda' had its origin in Democratic 
sources, but only a little investigation was necessary 
to show that before the general campaign it had been 
kindled to a glowing heat in the pre-primary campaign 
in Ohio by the sponsors for the candidacy of General 



10 

Leonard Wood, and that prior to that it had been 
agitated by men who for various reasons opposed Mr. 
Harding in the primary, and who now are accepted as 
his closest poh'tical friends." * * * "President Harding 
himself is disposed to forgive and forget and has 
frankly expressed his desire to let the animosities of 
campaign end with the contest. It is said that Judge 
Taft, Myron T. Herrick, Walter F. Brown, Attorney 
General Harry M. Daugherty and Howard Mannington 
counsel this course." 

THE EDITOR. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 
Introduction 

CHAPTER H 

. William Estabrook Chancellor 

CHAPTER HI 

The Issues of This Book 

CHAPTER IV 
The Negro Question 

CHAPTER V 
He Looks Like a President 

CHAPTER VI 
The Plutocracy 

CHAPTER VII 

The American Government and Plutocracy 

CHAPTER VIII 
Fake Biographies of Harding 

CHAPTER IX 
Races of Mankind 

CHAPTER X 

What Is a Cabinet? 

CHAPTER XI 

Ohio Political History 

11 



12 



CHAPTER XII 
Presidential History 

CHAPTER XIII 
Hamon and Harding 

CHAPTER XIV 

The Election Made to Order 

CHAPTER XV 
Letters to Divers People On Pertinent Subjects 

CHAPTER XVI 
The Constitution and the President 

CHAPTER XVII 

The Genealogy as Approved by the Family of 
Warren Gamaliel Harding 

CHAPTER XVIII 
Prof. Chancellor and the People 

CHAPTER XIX 

The League of Nations and the Coming Wars 

CHAPTER XX 

The Government of the District of Columbia 



CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION 

The administration of President Warren Harding 
has now proceeded several months, and we can see, and 
according to our lights understand, what the policies 
are to be, for there are no principles anywhere in it. 

Already Harding has done several things that ulti- 
mate history will regret. 

FIRST, he has broken the heart of the world by set- 
ting aside the League of Nations and the machinery 
for permanent world peace. In doing this, he has 
broken his promises to millions of persons who in good 
faith believed in him. It is true that he could not keep 
faith both with Johnson and with Taft; he has chosen 
rather to go with Johnson, Borah and Knox than with 
Lodge, Taft and Root. It is a melancholy decision, 
based entirely on immediate expediency. He needs 
the irreconcilable bitter-enders and is more afraid of 
them than the reservationists. He has failed to un- 
derstand the dream of Dante, Rousseau and Wilson, 
not to say of Isaiah and Jesus Christ. 

SECOND, he has broken the hearts of the colored 
people of America, who were told explicitly by the Re- 
publicans that Harding has negro blood and would re- 
member the negroes in his appointments. He has been 
ashamed of this element in his blood, ashamed of his 
own great-grandmother, Elizabeth Madison, so-called, 
and of the negroes that contributed their blood to his 
great-grandfather, George Tyrone (or Tyron) Harding. 

There are at least fifteen million negroes in this 
country and it is a safe guess that, hereafter, some of 

15 



16 

them will be Democrats. He has appointed so far but 
one person to any office of importance who has any 
discoverable negro blood ; which is no better than other 
Republicans have done before him. 

THIRD, he has shown by his messages and his let- 
ters to societies and to individuals that the Presidency 
has fallen into ignorant hands, that he cannot write 
English that is understandable, that the American poli- 
tical system is so rotten as to permit the election by an 
enormous majority of a person not competent to speak 
authoritatively upon public questions. His mental 
furniture, too, is that of a school boy. Europe and Asia 
now have us in contempt. 

FOURTH, his Cabinet is shown already to be a clut- 
ter of unrelated and discordant minds, such as can- 
not be brought together into any system of states- 
manship. Habitually all things to all men, his cabinet 
mirrors hmself. Not one man yet in the Cabinet, which 
was supposed to be the acme of all in American history, 
a Cabinet of multimillionaires, has disclosed the leader- 
ship necessary to help our domestic situation. Except 
as Daugherty or Mellon deal with Penrose and Smoot 
the Cabinet will have no influence whatever upon the 
processes of the Senate or of the House because the 
President himself carries no weight there and never 
did carry weight, and because the same is true of A. B. 
Fall, which is fortunate because Fall is committed to 
the policy of armed intervention in Mexico. Hughes 
carries no weight because he is disliked and because he 
lost the Presidential campaign of 1916 through blun- 
dering. This involved permanent alienation from Sen- 
ator Johnson. Most of the Senators are indifferent to 
Cabinet Secretaries; it is a strange man who would 
not prefer a Senatorship to a Cabinet position. To the 
Senate, even Hoover is of no importance; a Cabinet 
Secretary lives in the sunshine or dies in the shadow 



17 

of his Master, the President. Any elective office where 
there is no recall is better than almost any appointive 
office ; among the few exceptions being Federal Judge- 
ships. 

FIFTH, he has continued to pose as a common man, 
anxious to please the common people by a variety of 
poses. But even the common people do not care for 
that sort of thing. The common people like to think 
that the President is a superior man ; they like to feel 
that he has leisure and sport and wealth enough and 
lives above the common life. The common people do 
not like a man who tries to please them. Egg-rolling 
on the White House lawn, playing golf on the Potomac 
flat public course, opening the White House front lawn 
to the run of everyone, professing to wish to keep open 
house and see anyone who wishes an interview, writing 
letters to every society that sends an invitation and 
saying how sorry he is that he cannot attend, and all 
such doings and sayings, Harmless enough in them- 
selves, in the end contrary to the Harding fancy, do not 
"get" him anywhere; they are all of no importance. 
What the common people want is prosperity; they de- 
sire a propitious President, one who brings to them an 
era of plenty of work for good wages or fair profits 
from farm or trade. This alone counts with them. And 
when they see him trying to make himself popular 
otherwise, they laugh at him. 

SIXTH, he has started to make appointments to 
foreign lands that show him, expose him as a dealer in 
offices, a political debt payer, not a single-minded 
patriot thinking first, last and only of America. 

Already Harvey in his speech before the Pilgrim 
Club has offended the patriotic sense of his own party 
associates. 

He does not understand the morality of a man like 
Rutherford B. Hayes, who upon becoming President 



18 

said : "Now I have no friends. I will appoint only the 
best men available." Instead of taking this, the only 
patriotic and honorable position, Warren Harding is 
paying his political debts at the expense of Arr-^rica, 
which is corruption at its worst. Open bribery, the 
direct sale of offices, is less dangerous than the course 
now being pursued. Daugherty has made him what he 
is, and, therefore, he names this low-grade man Attor- 
ney General of the United States, to occupy a place of 
very great personal power. The Department of Justice 
ought to be sacred from the presence of any such man, 
who is not fit to be even a clerk in it, or janitor of the 
rooms at K and loth Streets, N. W. Harvey goes to 
England in payment for his services, for his bertayal 
of Wilson, for his leaving the Democratic party, and for 
revenge in becoming a Republican — a vile course. Har- 
vey is the man who printed in his WEEKLY a sacri- 
legious cartoon against the League of Nations. He also 
is a man of low-grade mind and obviously low-grade 
character. Herrick, who is mentally a better man, is 
morally lower than Harvey; he is in politics for the 
same reason that he is in banking and journalism, to 
make money and to get power. Herrick goes to France 
whether the French really like him or not. D. R. Cris- 
singer, who sold out also, as did Harvey, is already 
Controller of the Currency, in a position that should 
be filled by a high-grade financial and economic ex- 
pert. He has recently relieved the National Banks 
from serious responsibilities. They now can report 
general figures — to fool the people. Father Dennison 
has gone to Rome to be consul. This is an insult to the 
Italian Government which is constantly in war with 
the alleged right of the Roman Catholic Church to tem- 
poral power. Now the Pope has a right-hand man in 
the American consulate. To the Catholics, this is one 
of the most important positions in our Government. 



19 

Yet Harding attacked Cox for having a Catholic son-in- 
law. 

These are the worst cases ; others might be cited — 
like that of George W. Aldridge, made collector of the 
Port of New York, one of the lowest New York State 
politcians and a shameless corruptionist. Why? Be- 
cause at the Republican National Convention he voted 
on every ballot for Warren Harding and used Hamon 
money finally to win all the other New York delegates 
(46). Why has Harding done these things? Because 
he has no moral life himself, because he cannot see 
straight. The Presidency to him is a chance to reward 
his friends and to punish his enemies. We state these 
matters in the beginning to afford the readers of this 
book material for the consideration of the causes why 
Harding is what he is and is doing such things. 



CHAPTER II 

WILLIAM ESTABROOK CHANCELLOR 

Who is this man? 

He is a native of Dayton, as was his mother before 
him ; his father was born at New Carlisle. His grand- 
father Chancellor was born on the Wilderness trail in 
1797. His grandfather Estabrook founded Brookville, 
near Dayton, and the linseed oil business of the Miami 
Valley. 

He went to school in Dayton until twelve years 
old. Then he was educated in Northampton, Mass., 
Worcester, Mass., Harvard Law School, New York Uni- 
versity, and spent a year in Europe. He took more 
prizes than any other man ever graduated from Am- 
herst in the 101 years of its history to date, and was 
class orator. He was also President of the College Re- 
publican Club. He followed Roosevelt out of the Re- 
publican party in 1912, but became a Democrat then. 
He is the author of 38 different books, four on educa- 
tion, six on history, etc. 

For sixteen years he was city school superintendent, 
part of the time in Washington as the head of c ■'• the 
schools, colored and white; he was also cliairman of 
the District of Columbia Architectural Commission. 

He founded the Teachers' College of George Wash- 
ington University, and the Education Department of 
Johns Hopkins University. 

He wrote and worked through the Legislature the 
teachers' pension laws of New Jersey. 

The Ohio School Code is based upon the outline 
of one of his educational works. 

For twelve years he was officially connected with 

29 



21 

the College of Wooster, for over six of them being head 
of the Department of Economics and Politics. 

He was a member of the New York Press Club for 
many years, and had written many long paid articles 
for the New York Times, the New York Tribune, the 
Cleveland Plain Dealer, and other papers. As an 
economist, few men had equal standing in the world of 
journalism. He was a Wayne County delegate to the 
Ohio State Democratic Convention in 1916, 1918, and 
in 1920. He was Ohio Presidential Elector in 1916. He 
was a member of the City Council of Wooster, being 
elected in a Republican ward in 1919. He was the 
chairman of the Wayne County Four-Minute Men dur- 
ing the war. So impartial and fair was he in reputa- 
tion that no less than six Ohio cities had him deliver 
the Roosevelt memorial funeral oration. This occurred 
before the William McKinley Club in Canton. 

He has given paid public addresses in many differ- 
ent states upon over 4500 occasions. 

He married a niece of Henry Ward Beecher. He 
has been a Presbyterian by church membership since 
187F At. vvooster College, he had the men's junior and 
senirr Bible class. Because he would not sign a lie as 
to his belief, he was ousted contrary to all the college 
statutes and since then has been forced to leave the 
country for parts unknown. 

Can the Republican plutocracy destroy this man? 
We think not. 



CHAPTER III 
THE ISSUES OF THIS BOOK 

FIRST ISSUE 

There is a race consciousness that becomes a class- 
consciousness when the amount of traits of an indi- 
vidual from one race is superior to that from the race 
in which he prefers to remain as a member. There is 
no disposition on the part of friends of Professor 
Chancellor in publishing this book to insist that Warren 
Harding is by race a negro. It is evident to all that 
the man is mainly white. What we insist on is that the 
race consciousness of the Hardings in Blooming Grove 
caused them to remain negro; and that George Tyron 
Harding II never thought of calling themselves white 
until after the death of Amos Kling, father-in-law of 
Warren. Warren and his brother and sisters were 
reared and treated as colored people. 

We agree that they have the right to ask to be con- 
sidered white because racially they are mostly white; 
but we deny that they have the right to assert the lie 
that they have always been considered and have always 
considered themselves white. We assert that the rest 
of us have the right to ask whether they have had the 
rearing of white men and women. We assert the right 
of American neighbors of these Hardings to pass upon 
their qualifications social and moral and intellectual to 
he treated as all-white persons are. Pure white is not 
colored and is the opposite of negro. It is something 
that can not be claimed without being questioned. 

The Republicans call it les majeste to raise the is- 

22 



23 

sue ; but we raise it, not feeling as yet that the Syrian 
notion of the apotheosis of the ruler, making him a god, 
is unAmerican and improper in our democracy. We 
notice that the Ohio laws and courts call it no slander 
to speak of a man as a negro ; it is the truth when the 
fact, and the truth cannot slander especially when so 
used with the highest of human motives. If all men 
are created equal, why this Republican rage at telling 
the truth about their man in the White House ? A peo- 
ple threatened by contamination of the blood ought to 
care for the truth about its head men. 

SECOND ISSUE 

We raise also a less important issue. It is simply 
whether or not the College of Wooster should be sup- 
ported by public opinion in the violation of all its 
statutes and the suppression of truth in academic 
circles. A nation may recover from false notions, but 
it can never recover from contamination of the blood. 
Is it a false notion that a college professor who hap- 
pens to be a Democrat has no rights ? If so, the College 
of Wooster stands in a bad and lurid light before the 
world. 

Professor Chancellor is an historian. As such he 
looked into the record of Warren Harding, but made 
no statement. By design or accident, a man with the 
first and last name, who is black and sixty-five years 
old, born and reared among the Hardings, had his name 
printed on millions of sheets of tissue paper and sent 
broadcast over the country with a title attached thereto 
that made ignorant persons think that Wilham Esta- 
brook Chancellor was the author of these slips. William 
Chancellor was a Republican and trying to help Hard- 
ing. 

First the Republicans sent telegrams to Professor 



24 

Chancellor asking him to deny that he had made an 
investigation into Harding. This he declined to do. 
He said nothing for weeks. 

Then they sent to him and offered him ten thousand 
dollars to make a denial. This he refused. Then they 
went out and reported that he v/as in the pay of the 
Democrats. Even this did not smoke him out. He 
rAood pat and silent. 

Every day through even the summer vacation Pro- 
fessor Chancellor either taught the summer classes or 
gave teacher's institute lectures or taught in the regu- 
lar autumn term ; but the Republicans charged that he 
was out spreading these tissue paper slips. He knew 
nothing as to who v/as doing this. They made him, 
like God, present everywhere. 

But on about October 10th, the Republicans pre- 
pared an attack upon Professor Chancellor and filed an 
indemnity bond of $500,000 with the newspaper as- 
sociation in Chicago to protect themselves against any 
libel suit by Professor Chancellor. 

On October 25th, they paid, in Columbus, in cash 
$500,000 in care of a certain well-known woman, a cer- 
tified check of a well-known Chicago millionaire to pay 
for the publishing of these articles throughout the 
country. 

This millionaire is the husband of a woman whose 
father's memory, City School Superintendent Chancel- 
lor, when in Washington by order of the President, 
Theodore Roosevelt, had insulted by removing his mis- 
tress from the schools, and who is otherwise tied up 
with a Washington real estate group whom Professor 
Chancellor had angered by refusing to play their hands 
when on the District Architectural Commission. 

These articles stated that, on October 28th, Pro- 
fessor Chancellor had been ousted from his chair by 
the College Trustees for libelling Warren Harding; 



25 

v/hich shows that the spirit of prophecy rested upon 
the Chicago millionaire. This money was paid to those 
papers otherwise not willing to print them. 

On October 28th, per order of the Republican 
National CommJttee, the Trustees m.et at Wooster, At 
4 o'clock they asked Professor Chancellor to come to 
see them ; he did not know that they were even holding 
a meeting. He had already, at the request of the then 
dean of the faculty, signed a truthful statement that he 
had circulated no papers whatever about Harding, 
which in letter and spirit was the exact fact. But he 
had been told by the dean that the paper was desired 
solely for the Presbyterian Church at Kenton. The 
dean also asked him to sign a statement that Warren 
Harding was ALL WHITE. This THE PROFESSOR 
declined to do for the professor of ethics in the College, 
since it was a lie as to his belief. (The dean has now 
resigned). There were present at this raid upon 
Professor Chancellor, five Republican lawyers, not 
members of the board, and one Republican National 
Committeeman. There were absent seven members of 
the Board of Trustees, including one Trustee who had 
told Professor Chancellor that he had a perfect right to 
make an historical investigation. (He was then making 
a new edition of his book on the lives of the Presi- 
dents) . This man had received no notice. 

The President of the Board of Trustees began by 
telling Professor Chancellor that he did not wish to 
know the truth whether Warren Harding was white or 
colored. What he wished was a denial by Chancellor 
that Warren was colored. This denial Chancellor ab- 
solutely refused to make. 

The interview lasted fifteen minutes. 

In the course of these fifteen minutes, Professor 
Chancellor had perhaps three minutes to give his de- 
nial. He offered to prove that only an illiterate negro 



26 

or some other such person could have conceived this 
campaign. They refused to look at his written evidence 
of misspellings, etc. 

The meeting then adjourned, and the President of 
the Board, with another member, went down to the 
home of Professor Chancellor and then and there 
agreed : 

1. To allow him to disappear without any action 
by the Board. 

2. Not to publish anything against him. 

3. He was not to do anything against the College. 
Then the meeting reconvened, but the Republican 

majority repudiated this agreement. 

They called Warren Harding on the telephone and 
asked him to deny that he had colored blood, but he re- 
fused, saying that it would cost him the colored vote. 

Then they wired to him, asking him again to deny 
this, but he did not answer. 

After a late session, the President of the Board of 
Trustees persuaded them by a vote of 10 to 5 to repeal 
the action making Professor Chancellor a full member 
of the faculty for life ; and sent identical telegrams to 
Judson C. Welliver, Will H. Hays and H. M. Daugherty, 
explaining that they had ousted Chancellor after a full 
hearing. 

He then sent a telegram to the New York Press 
Club advising the Club that Chancellor had confessed 
libelling Harding. He lied and broke his promises, 
both. 

Now who is this President of the Board ? 

He is pastor of the church where the Chicago mil- 
lionaire worships when at home. 

He was chaplain of the Republican National Con- 
tion. 

What was the agreement between the Professors 
and the Trustees ? 



27 

1. That an accused professor shall have ninety days 
to prepare his defense. 

2. That he shall have the charges in writing. 

3. That he shall have a hearing first before the 
faculty, and Isecond before the Trustees with legal 
counsel. 

4. That if both faculty and Trustees agree, then he 
may be discharged, but only with a full year's pay in 
advance. 

In this case Chancellor had no hearing at all; no 
written charges; no time to prepare; no legal counsel, 
and no salary. Later he was given a few hundred dol- 
lars to move away. The faculty has never acted. 

It was given out by members of the Trustee Board 
that there were five charges against Chancellor, as fol- 
lows, viz.: 

1. He was a Democrat and as such has been elected 
to the city council ; that this had given offense to many 
patrons of the College. 

2. That he had made speeches for the League of 
Nations. He had done this by authority of the Presi- 
dent of the College. 

3. That he had written letters to others about Hard- 
ing. One of these letters had been sent to the editor 
of a religious paper owned by the same millionaire, but 
by order of the President of the College who ad- 
mitted it. 

4. That he had built up a department so large as 
to be irritating to other men on he faculty and was too 
big a man to be employed by any college trustee board. 
In exact language, the President of the Board of Trus- 
tees said, "He is better known than all the College put 
together." 

5. That he had written a New York Times-Annalist 
articles advocating the gold standard and attacking 
bankers' paper currency as dishonest. 



28 

There were defenses to each of these propositions, 
but they availed nothing except to hold five of the fif- 
teen trustees in line to support Chancellor. 

Professor Chancellor was ousted by ten men in a 
Trustees Board of twenty-two members. 

One of the men who voted against him at the next 
meeting of the Trustees said that he had been grossly 
deceived by the others ; but this availed nothing. 

Such is academic freedom in a so-called Christian 
college that does not wish to know the truth. God is 
truth. 

The friends of Professor Chancellor, handicapped 
by being unable to get the records or even to consult 
him, desire to have the American public look into this 
Wooster College case. 

Are the teachers of the youth, all of them, to be the 
tools and slaves of these negro-loving plutocrats ? 



CHAPTER IV 
THE NEGRO QUESTION 

What are the grounds for believing that Warren 
Harding rightly classifies among colored people? 

On what some regard as the "question" whether or 
not Warren is a negro or a colored man, Americana 
take one of many different positions. 

1. Some do not care. The President might be a 
Hottentot or a German from Berlin, and they would 
not care. It is not a matter of any importance or even 
of interest to them. They have other business to 
which to attend. The Government is a thing apart. 
It does not concern them who lives in the White House. 
Presidents may come and go. The Presidency is a 
kaleidoscope. University graduate or a negro school 
attendant ; it is all one to them. Why worry ? We can 
not change him, and the case might be worse than it is. 

2. It is a good thing to try the experiment. Let's 
all wait and see what the "nigger" will do ! "There are 
fifteen million black and colored people in the country. 
Every race has a right to be tried out. He may prove 
to be a very desirable man. All races are equal with 
us. Black, white, red, yellow, we are all Americans. 
Back him up! 

3. Some believe that government is bad, politics so 
rotten, that since the end of the world is coming soon, 
the worst that happens will only bring on the better 
sooner. Every wicked move by politicians is only an 
impulse toward the new day. 

4. Some are interested and hesitant; they are dis- 
appointed that such a choice has been made; but it 

2^ 



80 

might be worse. After all, a good negro is better than 
a bad white man. 

5. Some regard the charge, as they call it, as pure 
invention of malicious politicians. It is not worth even 
noticing. 

6. Some admit that Warren was once considered 
colored, but he has lived it down. He is not any longer 
a negro roustabout but our foremost man. Race means 
nothing when a fine specimen comes along. 

7. Some think that even a little negro blood is un- 
desirable, still with so much white blood, there is no 
harm in the choice — an octoroon is really, after all, a 
white man. 

8. Some are horrified. The thing is too awful to even 
think about. His election is an insult to the white 
women of the South. He ought to be impeached; but 
who can start it when the Senate and House are his 
political friends? We must take to the woods and try 
to survive. ', t.., 

9. Some are anxious to know the truth, then they 
will try to prevent the recurrence of this outrage to the 
white race. 

10. Many know the truth and are trying to get the 
proofs. They believe that white supremacy is the 
supremacy of patience and fair play. 

On the negro question itself. North and South are 
hopelessly divided, and the wonder is that America has 
remained one nation. The South regards the black 
man as an evil presence. The white man must keep 
him under. While the blacks remain in the land, they 
must be treated decently. No one should kill an un- 
offending black or colored man or rob him of his goods 
or wages ; but he should not vote. He should never be 
allowed to mate with a white woman. He should live 
in a separate segregated part of every city or of the 
country-side. He may individually work as a servant 



81 

or field hand, but all endeavor on his part to rise even 
to industrial equality should be frowned upon and when 
possible, defeated. These people do not hesitate to 
lynch an accused black or colored man on the same 
hypothesis that causes them to kill a wild beast. 

There is much to justify this position of the whites. 

A thousand instances of cruelty of the genuine 
blacks to one another might be cited. The black man 
will not lift a hand to help another black man in trouble. 
He will not work until driven by starvation to work. 
He punishes his own children so severely that it is not 
an unusual thing for a beaten child to die. He has no 
sex-morals. 

There is a case of a black man working as a porter 
in a hotel who admitted that he had no less than 
twenty-six wives in the course of his sex-affairs. In 
one instance, he took a widow and her daughter both 
and lived with them at the same time. 

In the official genealogy of the Hardings, which is 
included in the last chapter of the book, we have the 
printed statement that old Amos had one child born to 
one woman in November and another child born to an- 
other woman in April. 

Of course, white men have often been without sex- 
morals. But the sex-looseness of the colored or black 
man is almost universal. With the black and colored 
women, the case is distinctly better; many being vir- 
tuous according to white standards. 

The people who do not know these facts are simply 
ignorant of the negro problem. 

Those who say that it is no worse for a black man 
to mate with a white woman than for a white man to 
mate with a black woman, are ignorant of a few very 
plain facts of human anatomy and of negro lust. 

Many white persons who do know the facts, 
say because they believe that any black man known at 



^2 

any time to have sex-relations with a white woman, 
should be forthwith legally killed by electrocution or 
hanging, whether she consented or not. 

It so happens that the charge against the Hardings 
is that, being colored men, they took white women as 
mates. 

This is not a medical book, but we suggest that 
those who wish to get the scientific facts ask medical 
men who have knowledge of the negro anatomy and 
physiology. 

At a time when one person in every seven in the 
population is black or colored, when they have con- 
trolled one Presidential election, the people have the 
right to know these facts. 

There are leaders of Southern opinion who think 
that every person with negro blood should be placed in 
a part of the South where the whites shall be excluded. 
They would set aside certain counties for blacks alone. 

It is an unhappy fact that every human being de- 
sires a mate superior to himself or herself. This is 
the law of ascent. Colored women desire white men; 
black women desire colored men. Black men are 
"crazy" to get white women or colored women. There- 
fore, we shall have lynchings, and we shall have them 
until the whole population is all white or all black, for 
race instinct is behind the sins and the lynchings. Such 
is the antique fear of many Southerners. 

The interest of Professor Chancellor in this, the 
worst of all American problems, did not begin in 1920 
with the Presidential campaign. It rested upon four 
grounds. 

1. He comes upon his father's side from old Vir- 
ginia slave-holding families, the Warwicks, Madisons, 
Marshalls, Servisses, Pogues, Boilings and Chancellors. 

2. He studied race anthropology in Europe, and has 
made many field studies in this country. 



33 

3. He was school superintendent in Washington, 
having there in the negro department of the schools 
19,000 colored children, 670 colored teachers, and 260 
colored engineers and janitors. 

4, He has been a college teacher and writer upon 
these matters for many years. 

When he heard that Harding had negro blood it 
aroused his established scientific interest. 

There appears to be easily separable in the United 
States among the several hundred thousand negroes 
of pure blood — about one-sixteenth of them all — no less 
than fourteen negro "races," using the word in the 
ethnological sense, so Professor Chancellor has written 
to his friends. 

There are also classed among the negroes, falsely, 
groups of Malays, Berbers, Arabs and Moors. Even 
pure Indians have been so grouped by action of di- 
visive forces of public opinion and of social taboo. 

These so-called negroes, fourteen races in all, are 
Senegambians, Hottentots, Mosambiquians, Pigmies, 
Sudanese, Kaffirs, Zulus, Gold Coast, Plateau, Ethio- 
pians, Abyssinians, Congoese, Senegalians, and 
domesticated negroes who for many centuries have 
been made the slaves of Moors and urbanized. 

The differences between these various races of 
negroes are as great as those between the white races 
of Europe, in culture and even in external appearance; 
but they have one trait in common — long, naiTOw 
heads. This has been discussed elsewhere. 

To say that Warren Harding has negro blood is not 
to assert that his ancestry is from the Senegambian 
negroes, or from plantation field hands enslaved to 
white masters. 

Northern people who do not know many negroes, 
have a concept of the negro ; according to this concept, 
he is kinky-haired, pot-bellied, black as coal, with big 



84 

brown eyes, a prognatious jaw, flat feet, and long arms 
and legs, the knees not standing straight. 

There may be a few such negroes in the United 
States, but they are very few. 

Were the question about Harding in this form: 
"Did his family rear him with the notion that he was 
a colored boy to be a colored man?" there could be in 
the light and truth of the opinion of the neighbors, a 
thousand of them in Little Africa, meaning the three 
counties, Crawford, Morrow and Marion, where the 
thousands of Hardings live, just one answer, "Yes!" 

Doctor George Tryon (Tyrone) Harding, father of 
Warren, never would have considered himself any- 
thing but a colored man until his death if Warren had 
not married the rich banker's daughter. And Warren 
with his brothers and sisters would have all so re- 
garded themselves. They would have gone back and 
forth to Blooming Grove and have shared the views of 
their colored kinsmen, who are half of the population. 

But fate had something else in store. It had in 
store the effort of George T. Harding and of his chil- 
dren to defeat the truth of social opinion. 

But again the question about Harding is not 
whether or not he was reared as a colored boy with 
the training and notions of colored people; he has 
escaped that social classification at last though not 
without having left some bitter enemies in Marion, 
where the better element never yet has had him in 
their homes. Senator or President, though he be, he 
will never again live in Marion. When he becomes ex- 
President, he will go to some city where his past will 
be ignored. 

The actual question is, in the physical sense, has 
Warren any negro blood? If so, what is the line of 
proof ? 

Socially, a man is what his neighbors report. He 



35 

has to take their classification or get out from among 
them. When they call him a negro, it does no good 
to sue them for slander ; they still think so. 

In September and October, when Professor Chancel- 
lor and newspaper correspondents and others by 
scores went to Blooming Grove, New Caledonia, Iberia 
and Steam Corners, no one of them ever found one man 
or woman who denied that the Hardings were anything 
but colored people. The Hardings themselves agreed 
that they were so called by everyone. 

Of course, after the tremendous furor over the mat- 
ter, and especially after Professor Chancellor was 
ousted from his position and after the rich Republi- 
cans had gone among them with threats and with 
money, the neighbors became silent — naturally. Many 
ignorant persons now believe that President Harding 
could put them in jail for telling the truth about him, 
and so he could with Daugherty and the secret service 
at his call. 

But once that Harding ceases to be President, what 
will then happen? 

Give the neighborhood time to recover itself. Espe- 
cally bitter are the darker negroes whom the Republi- 
cans have failed to reward as promised. There will be 
scores to settle that will make the old feud — as Hard- 
ing calls it — mild indeed. 

For Warren Harding himself says that "The peo- 
ple have been calling his family and kin negroes for 
eighty years." This was given out twice in a long in- 
terview. 

Curious how the falsehood has lasted ; but Harding 
does not dare to pronounce it a lie ; he says that people 
have a right to their opinions and that he is sorry 
about their opinion. 

Thousands of telegrams were sent to him from all 
parts of the country asking him to deny the truth about 



36 

his ancestry; but he never has yet said that he has 
no negro blood. 

He deplores the discussion of the subject. 

Is he afraid of the ghosts of his negro ancestors? 
No man should ever deny his ancestors. That is like 
denying God Himself. No man should be ashamed of 
his forefathers. Some of them, perhaps a man who 
was hanged, may have transmitted to him some trait 
of exceeding value in his own life. It is easy to see 
that at least a few of the traits of Warren that have 
enabled him to "succeed" so well are negro traits. 

What people call one does not make it so. All 
Blooming Grove may be wrong on Warren and his 
father, George T. Harding, and his grandfather, 
Charles A. Harding, and his great-grandfather, George 
T, Harding I, and the second wife, Elizabeth Madison, 
so-called, who was black. She was Warren's great- 
grandmother. 

No Harding descended from this Elizabeth has ever 
had the courage to tell who her parents were. No pic- 
ture of her is acknowledged to exist. 

Yet this is the fact: 

George Tryon, or Tyrone, Harding born June 5, 1790. 

Married Ann Roberts, 1812. 

Ann died in 1815. 

Married Elizabeth Madsion, 1816. 

Elizabeth died Jan. 6, 1869. 

The children were Huldah and Phoeba Ann. 

The children of Elizabeth were Oliver Perry, 
Charles Amos (or Alexander), Miranda. 

No persons with ears can doubt for one moment 
what Elizabeth was; she is well remembered by eight 
old persons still living as late as October, 1920, in 
Blooming Grove and near by. One and all say that 
Elizabeth was black. One woman, past ninety, said 
that "she had eyes black as night." She was so dark 



87 

that she frightened white children of her neighbors. 

Possibly se was a Moor? A Blackmoor? Or a very- 
dark Scottish woman, say of the black Picts? 

Country neighbors are not experts in such matters. 
Her son, the grandfather of Warren, lived till past 
1880; he also is well remembered and there are pictures 
enough of him. 

He had curly, kinky hair, and a swart complexion, and 
a wide, big body, and great nostrils. Also, he left a 
lot of children. 

Professor Chancellor offered to take the Dean of 
the College of Wooster, at his own expense, to Bloom- 
ing Grove and show these brothers, sisters and cousins 
bom of Charles A. Harding and of his brother, Oliver 
Perry Harding, to the Dean in order to show the living 
proofs. But the Dean preferred to publish his state- 
ment that he had circulated nothing on the subject and 
let the country believe that Chancellor had "retracted" 
what he denied having done. Dean Elias Compton 
teaches ethics in the college, and was Dean then. 
Exigencies of politics require flexible ethics. 

There are five of these descendants of Elizabeth in 
Blooming Grove and nearby. One of them is Mrs. J. C. 
She is a fine old dark colored woman, who never has 
offended any one; she is a good woman. She allowed 
Professor Chancellor to take six pictures of herself, for 
which courtesy he has refrained from printing them. 
She has a large heavy body, big brown eyes, very dark 
skin, and is typical mulatto. She had her pictures 
taken with her Bible under her arm, and that warded 
off evil spirits. 

She is not a Moor, or an Arab; she is a dear old 
colored mammy, very dark. 

In a letter to one of his friends. Professor Chancel- 
lor said that he could not bring himself to using those 
pictures, because she was so much like the old colored 



88 

\voman who had always lived in his family, helping 
bring up the children. 

One preacher asked him why he objected to having 
a colored President. "Do not these colored people go 
to Heaven?" He replied: "No doubt of it; but what 
has that to do with their intellectual fitness to bear 
sons to go to the White House? Not every Saint is 
fit to rule a nation." 

There are four others, all of them darkies. Their 
names, like hers, might be given, but they live in 
Blooming Grove and Gallon and can be seen at any 
time. One of them, smaller, is equally dark. All of 
them are plainly negro. 

Such are the nearest living relatives of Warren 
Harding in that generation. 

Let us proceed to the court records. 
In 1849 one David Butler killed Amos Smith in this 
manner. 

Butler and Smith were blacksmith partners at 
Blooming Grove. Butler's wife was a Harding woman. 
She owed some money to Smith's wife — fifty cents. 
Like negro women, she was thriftless. One afternoon 
as they were closing the shop. Smith asked Butler to 
ask his wife to pay the money to Mrs. Smith. Butler 
replied that his wife denied that she owed any money 
to Mrs. Smith. Thereupon Smith told Butler that he 
had a nigger for a wife. Butler replied by throwing a 
piece of iron at Smith — a piece about an inch square 
and ten inches long. This iron hit Smith on the side 
of his head, and down he went. Butler immediately 
ran to him and picked him up and carried him into a 
house nearby. 

They sent for a doctor who treated the skull frac- 
ture. A few days later fever developed and the doctor 
bled him, the same doctor who afterwards taught 



89 

George Tryon Harding all the medicine he ever knew. 
A fortnight later Smith died. 

In 1850 the grand jury of Morrow county, which 
had just been created out of Crawford county in the 
wilderness, indicted Butler for manslaughter, and he 
was tried. 

The defense was: 

1. He was justified in killing Smith because his 
wife was not a negro woman. 

2. Smith died of malpractice. 

3. He had no malice, because he immediately tried 
to re^''"^^ Smith. It was only a hot instant of wrath 
betv een friends. He was a man of good character. 

The prosecuting attorney was a famous lawyer, 
namx ;d Columbus Delano. We have sent men to a dozen 
statss to find the copious notes that Delano kept of 
this trial. 

We saw at Mt. Gilead the original brief records of 
the indictment and steps in the course of the trial 
which was in the court seven years. In the midst of 
the search of this record the investigator was con- 
fronted by a low-browed, square- jawed heckler whose 
only business apparently was to maintain the curtain 
of darkness over the skeletons of family history just 
as the same investigator found another busy guardian 
had extracted the pardon papers in the same Butler 
case from the files at the State House at Columbus, 
but fortunately too late to prevent photographic copies 
being made of the papers by the man who beat the 
vandal on the job. There was intense neighborhood 
feeling aroused, mostly against Butler. On this the 
Hardings countered as best they could. 

The jury found: 

1. That it was not slander to call Mrs. Butler a 
negro, since the Hardings were always so called. But 
even if untrue it was no justification for the act. 



40 

2. That Smith died of the fracture, not of the bleed- 
ing by the doctor. 

3. That he was of good character and recom- 
mended mercy. 

Butler was sentenced to the penetentiary for five 
years. 

After two years he was pnrdoned by the Governor 
on a petition presented by the Harding relatives. 

Two other killings have been charged to the same 
feud. The country people decline to take the Hardings 
as all-white. When they try to escape from this social 
classification, quarrels result. 

As we have shown elsewhere, contrary to the sup- 
position of our kind New England and other far-away 
Northern friends, it is NOT the presumption in Bloom- 
ing Grove that every child is white until the opposite 
is proven. Blooming Grove is a Fugitive Slave district. 
More than half the people have colored blood. The pre- 
sumption is that there is colored blood somewhere in 
the ancestry. This is not charged as a crime, but as a 
fact. There is nothing "bar sinister" about it. Warren 
Harding is not a white man's illegitimate son nor was 
his father before him. We are not engaged in slander 
and libel but in science. 

If Warren Harding turns out "to be the best Presi- 
dent since Lincoln, engaged skilfully in cleaning up the 
awfulness left by the Democrats and by the miserable 
internationalist and invalid Woodrow Wilson," as the 
Republicans say, then we should, all of us, seek to 
marry our sons to colored girls; though, of course, not 
our girls to colored men. The Dickersons have told us 
they were horribly shocked at what their daughter did. 
Nevertheless, if Warren proves to be a very great man, 
we may have to come to just this. 

When the report M^ent out through the country that 
Warren Harding has negro blood, the city editor of the 



, , - ^^ 

Republican POST INTELLIGENCER turned to his 
most experienced of reporters and said, "There is a 
niece of Warren Harding living here in Seattle: I don't 
know who she is or where she lives; take the photog- 
rapher and find her ; we will print her picture and show 
up the 'bughouse' professor out there in Ohio." 

The city editor did not know that his information 
came from William Chancellor, colored, aged sixty-five, 
a Republican trying to get votes for his friend. 

It took the reporter two days to find the woman. 
He brought back the photographer and had the pic- 
tures developed, but he refused to write any story, and 
the city editor was wroth within him. In an hour or 
so the developed plates came down from the sky room. 

The city editor looked at them and he told the vet- 
eran reporter this: "That college professor out in 
Ohio is not so bughouse after all." 

And the veteran reporter told this to the people of 
Seattle after the election ! 

But the people have not yet seen the pictures of the 
niece of Warren. 

When Professor Chancellor was city school super- 
intendent of Washington, Senator Joseph B. Foraker 
took very great interest in the colored people. He sent 
a letter of introduction for a woman to Professor Chan- 
cellor asking the appointment of the woman to a posi- 
tion in the schools, saying that she was a quadroon 
and desired to go into the colored schools. 

She was a sister of Warren Harding. 

Later she became a policewoman in Washington, 
where she served until Warren was chosen President. 

In October, 1920, she was living in a colored board- 
ing house with a colored landlady. 

She is now in the soldiers' reconstruction work, and 
passes for white ; that is, she tries to do so. 

Would a white man allow a sister to be a police- 



42 

woman in Washington when he was United States 
Senator? We think not. Warren allowed his sister to 
do this dangerous and vile work — in Washington, one 
of the foulest cities on earth in sex-morals. 

This sister is a far abler and better person morally 
than her brother in the White House. 

We are not making war on women ; if we were, we 
could tell much more. 

It is, however, the black sheep of this family who 
has risen to the top, where Daugherty can be regent 
over him and President in fact 

The husband of this sister of Warren's has never 
supported her, and told various persons that there were 
obvious reasons why he desired no children by her; 
they are childless by intention, he says. They do not 
keep house together as he is a white man, of French 
descent, the reasons are obvious enough. But he is low 
enough himself morally to bask in the sunshine of the 
favor of the President and get money through him. 

It is painful to observe that Warren Harding and 
the Duchess do not invite these neighbor kinsfolk to 
the White House and introduce them to their friends. 

The masquerader there is playing a very difficult 
role. 

Warren Harding has alive now one father, ONE 
BROTHER, SIX SISTERS, and some thousand other 
kinsfolk descended from his own great-grandfather, 
Amos Harding, the man who had the two women at the 
same time bearing him children. 

Why are they not often, many of them at a time, 
in the White House? 

Several of them are very rich. One is a Chicago 
millionaire, C. E. Harding. Another has a fine store 
in Salt Lake City. His own brother is a physician in 
Columbus, Ohio. 

Are they ashamed of him, or is he ashamed of 



43 

them; or are they all afraid of the CUMULATIVE 
EVIDENCE when viewed together? 

On Thanksgiving D?y, 1920, after election, Warren 
gave a dinner party to six men belonging to the Re- 
publican Associated Press. No women were present 
except the "Duchess." But old George Tryon Harding 
sat alone in a restaurant in a town famous among 
traveling men for its lov/-class eating places, and ate 
his dinner alone, the father of the President-elect. Was 
this the way a white man would have treated his di- 
vorced father, living in comparative need? 

Why are these thousand kinsfolk alienated from 
this man in the White House ? 

Would the kinsfolk of a white man there be so 
afraid to exhibit their interest in him? 

When William Henry Harrison was President, 
thirty-five of his kinfolk lived with him in the White 
House. 

Zachary Taylor filled it with sons, daughters, 
cousins, aunts. 

Jefferson made it a boarding house for kin and 
friends — free board. 

Roosevelt kept a lot of guests going and coming, 
proud to have them all. 

But there is a pall upon the White House now ; it is 
not the pall of negro blood, but something worse ; it is 
the pall of fear of exposure. Open, frank, honest ad- 
mission long ago would have cleared the atmsophere; 
but Warren and Fall and Daugherty and the Duchess 
?nd Hays must play the game as it is. They dealt 
themselves this hand. 



CHAPTER V 



'HE LOOKS LIKE A PRESIDENT' 



When Warren Gamaliel Bancroft Harding — for such 
is his name, if it is not really Warren Gamaliel Winni- 
peg Bancroft Harding, as his father first said in the 
Presidential campaign — first came before the country 
as the Republican candidate, the Republican proponents 
of this singular human phenomenon, a mestizo in 
American big politics, started a 

BATTLE CRY 
"Warren looks like a President." 

This did catch the people. 

What is it to "look like a President?" 

There were the big men physically, viz.: 

Weight Height Party 

George Washington 200 6 ft. 2 in. None 

Thomas Jefferson 170 6 ft. 1 in. Democrat 

William Henry Harrison _..170 6 ft. 2 in. Whig 

Zachary Taylor 225 6 ft. in. Democrat 

James Buchanan 180 6 ft. in. Democrat 

Millard Fillmore 200 6 ft. 4 in. Democrat 

Abraham Lincoln 165 6 ft. 4 in. Republican 

Grover Cleveland 275 6 ft. in. Democrat 

William Howard Taft 325 6 ft. 2 in. Republican 

Woodrow Wilson 180 6 ft. 1 in. Democrat 

It does not appear that there has been any 
monopoly of big men, physically considered, by the 
Whig-Republicans. 

Nor does it appear that only big men have made 
good Presidents. The following were relatively small 
men, viz.: 

44 



45 

Madison, Jackson, Van Buren, B. Harrison, McKin- 
ley. Roosevelt was a heavy man but only 5 feet 9 
inches in stature. He weighed 225 pounds most of the 
time he was President, but most of his life he was un- 
der 200 pounds. 

Warren Harding is 6 feet tall and weighs over 200 
pounds. He has a large face and long narrow head : no 
other President looked like him. He has, it is said, 
dignity. So had, in a very marked degree, James 
Buchanan. 

Is the requisite posture, tall, upstanding, eyes to 
the front, searching, self-reliant pose? Warren has it 
not. He does not stand well. He never looks anyone 
in the eye. 

It is said by his admirers that he has "a beetling, 
craggy brow v/ith deep-set eyes." Then he is compared 
with Black Dan Webster. But Black Dan had eyes on 
fire, black and alive, very wonderful eyes. He made 
all his great speeches without notes. He had the divine 
fire, no doubt. Put the two heads side by side in the 
front and sideways both, and see not resemblance, but 
the eternal differences. Black Dan was a Black Pict, 
straight from the purest blood of Scotland, and had 
brains that matched. The obscure gray eyes of Warren 
Harding contradict the craggy brow. Still people keep 
his face on view in their parlor windows even now ; he 
saved the Republican party from defeat ; he kept it to- 
gether. The party was more important than the nation 
and the world. 

Warren Harding is big; he is wide with a curved 
back; and with long prehensile weak hands but with 
heavy arms. His underpinning is frail relatively. He 
has a posture exactly the opposite of that of a well- 
trained soldier. Besides John J. Pershing, who is every 
inch a soldier, or Leonard Wood, he is a slouching 
civilian. 



46 

This brings up the question that was raised im- 
mediately after his election by his announcement in the 
press that he had ordered many suitable garments for 
his work as President. Afterwards he denied that he 
had ordered so many ; the managers told him to do this. 
He had an idea that clothing makes a difference in 
Presidents. 

George Washington loved good clothes. But Abra- 
ham Lincoln did not. Washington was born to good 
clothes. Theodore Roosevelt, who was by far the rich- 
est of the Presidents, had a great variety of attire, but 
he preferred his outing clothes to any other, and old 
clohes at that. 

Jackson dressed well when on parade — otherwise 
he dressed in the plainest way — in old clothes. 

Jefferson had no interest at all in clothes. 

The man who thinks first of how to dress in a new 
office has something the matter with his mind. He 
sees the externalities of his functions. Arthur was af- 
flicted with a passion for good clothes. So was Kaiser 
Wilhelm II. 

Beginning at fifty-two years of age in order to 
fight arterio-sclerosis by advice of sanitarium 
physicians, Warren Harding took up golf ; he can make 
a very long drive. His score being usually about 95, 
In other words, he is not a natural athlete ; he does not 
ride horses, though brought up in the country ; he does 
not swim or play tennis ; or take long walks. He does 
not dance; he never has boxed or wrestled; he did not 
play baseball or football; of course, he never had the 
athletic training of college. 

Like every other man, he is entitled to every ounce 
of credit that he can weigh in. What is this ? 

Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson drank no alcoholic stim- 
ulants and smoked and chew no tobacco. McKinley 
smoked tobacco. Harding uses tobacco in every form, 



47 

including even cigarettes, and, of course, he drinks. 

The Anti-Cigarette League published a cartoon 
showing him caught in eight different poses smoking 
cigarettes. Since that time he has been careful not to 
be snapped with even a cigar in his mouth. He is very 
shrewd in such matters. 

Experts in heredity have discovered a very import- 
ant law ; that a hybrid tends to slough off as he grows 
older the traits of the shorter-lived races that have en- 
tered into his making. This law is working for Warren- 
The negro is a short-lived race. That blood is dying in 
him. The question is whether if he lives to be a hun- 
dred years old, his Dutch or his Indian ancestry will 
win the mastery ; both races are long-lived. To those 
who survive him the matter is worth following up. 

The Indian has the trait of seeming to think hard 
for a long, long time ; he requires a very long time to 
"make up his mind." His decisions in ages past have 
generally been far from wise ; but he has acquired the 
reputation for being very wise all the same. Truth is 
that there is no rule about this matter; some men 
decide quickly, and are geniuses because they decide so 
many issues well. Few Indans have shown genius. 

The Dutch have taken much time to decide and 
have generally decided wisely; but few Dutchmen are 
geniuses. 

The long thinker is usually dull and stupid. If 
while he is thinking, he is getting new facts, then he 
does well to take time. Otherwise, long deliberation 
is stupidity or senility. 

Before he became President, even in the campaign, 
in order to get votes, but sincerely, he told everyone 
that he intended to "keep the doors of the White House 
open for anyone to come and see him ;" this has a beau- 
tiful sound. But no sooner had he come to the White 
House than like every olher man since Jefferson he 



48 ■' 

found that the American people are too many for one 
man. He has had to make appointments and not many 
a day at that. He spoke derisively of the plan of 
Woodrow Wilson before his illness to allot two hours 
a day to callers, and just so many minutes to each 
caller, never over fifteen. On this basis he saw ten or 
twenty a day. But why not keep the doors of the 
executive offices always open? 

Totally inexperienced in such executive work, never 
having managed even "THE STAR," Warren Harding 
was unaware that a President has from 300 to 1000 
pieces of mail each day; that he is always getting 
resignations and making appointments to office; that 
he must read and sign no end of documents of all kinds. 
The clerical work is enormous. 

Even in his convalescence, Woodrow Wilson spent 
four hours a day in merely signing necessary state 
papers, and did other work a few minutes at a time. 
Thanks to his wife and good medical care, he survived. 

There is no way of turning this work off upon the 
Cabinet Secretaries; they are clerks by law and the 
President is solely responsible. The Controller of the 
Treasury must see the name of the President himself 
upon thousands of documents before he allows the 
Treasury to make any payment. It will take a change 
in the Constitution itself to change this. 

But what is the personality of the President? Why 
is it that the Republicans are sendng out so many "pen 
pictures" of the man? When the Wayne County dele- 
gation of Republicans — Ohio — 300 strong, came back 
from Marion in the Presidential campaign, they were 
strangely silent. The people asked them to tell what 
Warren was like and they flunked out on this ques- 
tion. What is he like? 

In his early days he applied for admission to a cer- 
tain secret society ; and he failed in three lodges. Then 



49 

he was admitted to one for one degree only. He was 
blocked for all others until after he was elected Presi- 
dent. What is the personality of such a man ? 

The many "pen portraits" are due to the fact that 
he is an enigma to all those who do not understand a 
very simple fact ; a mirror flat in the sunlight reflects 
all the sky and clouds ; and it very closely resembles 
deep blue water. Jump in and what happens? 

This is the trouble with Warren. A very great man, 
a candidate against him for the Republican nomination, 
went from New York to see him in an interview ; after 
the interview he had nothing to say about Warren. 
He was baffled, as every other intelligent man is. 

Warren Harding has no progi'am ; he has no depth ; 
he reflects what is near him that appeals to a very few 
primitive instincts. He is genial enough; and, in a 
light way, affable; but how can a man who has never 
studied American history or government beyond the 
elementary school books converse on politics and juris- 
prudence and economics with a University President? 
He can seem to listen. As his pastor, Reverend Doctor 
McAfee, says in an interview in the New York World, 
he is an "eloquent listener." 

Before proceeding, we have a word to say about 
this same C. F. McAfee. He is a Baptist who went to 
Marion to the church where Harding goes occasionally, 
just five years ago ; that is, in 1913, when Harding was 
United States Senator. Being a preacher, he looks 
professionally for the good in men, and for nothing 
else. He knows nothing of the past of this man. He 
has no familiarity with his Washington life. Because 
Warren pays his church dues, or rather Mrs. Warren, 
he regards him as a useful church member, though ad- 
mitting that he is never at prayer meeting, has no 
Bible class, and makes no personal contribution to the 
Christian World, Warren is a devout Christian, and 



50 

three daj^s afterwards he had a stroke of paralysis. 
This is not cause-and-effect, but it shows the mental 
and physical instability of the man who is cited as 
authoritj^ for the fine Christianity of Warren Harding-. 

Of course, being a Baptist, he wished Warren to 
win. Even preachers are human. 

But to go back to the question. It is "incredible" 
that a man who has so little mental life should have 
been Lieutenant Governor and United States Senator. 
Yet exactly this has happened. Those who are familiar 
with colleges knovv^ that the college president is often 
a distinctly confused and ignorant man ; that is what 
the trustees desire in order to manage the college 
through a dummy. It even happens in business that a 
big man in the concern is confused and ignorant. 

Warren Harding is very ignorant. He has asked 
many times — What is an association of nations? He 
knows no geography outside of the United States, and 
he knows this but little, as is shown by his going to 
Point Isabel in P'ebruary. 

He knows no Latin and no foreign language; he 
knows only English words, and not even English gram- 
mar and rhetoric. He did nothing in business as an 
accountant. 

But a man may be both ignorant and confused and 
at the same time shrewd according to his ov^^n lights. 
When he was nominated so suddenly, he turned to his 
advisers and asked, "Is not this too premtiture?" He 
knew that the convention had been brought up with 
money, and he was afraid that Hiram Johnson, Wood 
and Lowden would "blow up" on him, as they did not. 

Only Nicholas Murray Butler "blew up," and he 
apologized in order to save his Presidency of Columbia 
University. 

Hunger, lust, vanity — these are the dominant in- 
stincts, together with a gaming passion, a love of play- 



51 

ing for good stakes. He is a born adventurer ; does this 
show the truth of the story of the neighbors that his 
great-grandfather, Amos Harding, was a pirate? 
Warren is no open fighter; he prefers to get at the 
backs of men, as the RepubHcan Convention proved. 

We are very plain and direct here. 

There have been several great public political crimes 
by great parties in the history of the United States, 
backed apparently by the people. 

One was the Mexican War. 

Another was the P^'ugitive Slave Act, together with 
the infamous Dred Scott Decision which made Abra- 
ham Lincoln President, because they permitted free 
speech in those days and lese majeste did not rule as it 
does today in our cowardly times. Stealing the Presi- 
dency from Tilden was a crime in 1876-7. 

But a far greater political crime, organized by a 
great party, was the rejection of peace for the world 
and the setting back of the clock of time for all hu- 
manity a thousand years. The injury for the present 
is irreparable. 

Therefore, bad as Polk was, bad as Taney and 
Buchanan were, politically bad as Hayes was, this 
Warren Harding will go down into history, the history 
of the world, as still worse. Perhaps a Harriet 
Eeecher Stone and an Abraham Lincoln will arise to 
show the whole deviltry up. 

The private morals of Polk and Buchanan and 
Hayes were spotless ; and the only sin of Taney was 
that he had defended many smugglers of slaves when 
a young lawyer. Even if the private morals had been 
always what his pastor says he believes they have 
been, this would not save him from the condemna- 
tion of the just. Pilate appears to have been a very 
good man in his private morals. 

Big, lazy, slouching, confused, ignorant, affable, 



52 

yellow and cringing like a negro butler to the great, 
such is the man who has been used by Lodge, Smoot, 
Penrose, Knox, Harvey, Daugherty, to ruin Woodrow 
Wilson for the time being and to crash the hopes of 
mankind for world peace. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE PLUTOCRACY 

It was in the days of President William McKinley 
that Americans began to see the conversion of the 
American social order into a plutocracy, and when 
Theodore Roosevelt came down from Mount Marcy in 
the Adirondacks to succeed him after his death at the 
hands of a foreign-born and foreign-reared anarchist, 
the first question that was asked of him was what 
would be his disposition toward this developing plu- 
tocracy. What he said was very different from what 
he did — for which the would-be plutocrats never for- 
gave him ; but bided their time and waited, and plotted, 
until they made an election to order in 1920, of which 
we have spoken fully elsewhere. 

But what is the plutocracy? 

It certainly is not capitalism, which is a very good 
economic scheme. 

Capitalism is a plan by which, through the organ- 
ization of corporations, all, even those with but small 
savings, may contribute to the permanent tools of pro- 
duction — buildings, lands, machinery, materials, work- 
ing funds, credits. 

Plutocracy could exist even without corporations, 
through the very admirable system of private property 
personally owned with full liabilities for every debt 
against every partner. Nevertheless, corporate prop- 
erty lends itself easily to the schemes of plutocracy. 

Far back in the nineteenth century, when Governor 
of the State of New York, Silas Wright, who had been 
a United States Senator, and who was the actual 

68 



54 

author of the famous Wilmot Proviso against slavery 
in the free States, which was directed against the Fugi- 
tive Slave Act, but destroyed by the Dred Scott De- 
cision in 1857, prophesied that corporate property 
would become a curse to America. This is why he was 
impeached by his Legislature and removed from the 
Governship. Unhappily he died in the very year when 
the common people were organizing to secure for him 
the nomination of the Whigs to the Presidency, 

The great slaveholders were a plutocracy that held 
all the South and the great Atlantic Coast cities, includ- 
ing New York. All together the slaveholders had about 
one billion dollars worth of domestic chattels in human 
form, but more or less off color frm Caucasian, though 
many of them had the best white blood of the South, 
a condition due rather to the race customs of the 
primitive negroes than to the advances of the younger 
white men. In Africa, as in Tahiti today, it is the cus- 
tom of the girls to be promiscuous until after marriage. 
But small as a billion dollars looks to Americans now 
when single corporations are said to have that much 
and more of property, commercially valued, it M'as 
fully one-tenth of all the wealth of America prior to 
the Civil War. 

A plutocracy does not necessarily own all the prop- 
erty of a people. It needs only to own the public press, 
the pulpit, the larger banks, and the larger business 
enterprises ; thereby it owns the government. 

Such was the power of the slavery plutocracy that 
in 1862 the F)oard of Aldermen of New York City voted 
to form the State of Tri-Insulae in order to secede from 
the Union and to help the South overseas and by resist- 
ing he draft. 

The end of the war broke that plutocracy and 
started new wealth, especially in great railroads to the 
Pacific. 



55 

Oil, steel, railroads and banks are now the main 
interests of the plutocracy that began to form in the 
days of McKinley when Hanna was the real President. 
Then we called them "trusts" and "syndicates" and 
"pools." 

By no means all the rich are "plutocrats," and not 
all the plutocrats are very rich. Plutocracy is a sys- 
tem. Henry Ford is not a plutocrat, though undoubt- 
edly one of the richest men in America, Truman H. 
Newberry, who ran against him and bought the elec- 
tion to the Senate and thereby defeated the League of 
Nations Covenant, is but a small multi-millionaire com- 
pared with Ford. But Newberry belongs to the 
plutocracy and Ford fights against it. The core of the 
plutocracy, of course, consists of men and of the estates 
of men of very great wealth. In order to avoid being 
misunderstood, we name a few of the very rich men 
and families that belong to the plutocracy : The Rocke- 
fellers, George H. Baker, the Guggenheims, Judge 
Gary, the Noyeses, of Washington. 

Vast as is the wealth of the Morgan bankers, the 
firm does not belong to the plutocracy for the sufficient 
reason that it realizes the fallacy of the proposition ; 
plutocracy in a free land under Magna Carta and the 
Federal Constitution, is certain to invite its own ruin. 
There are said to be now in this land seven men or 
estates worth over $100,000,000 each ; and 37,000 mil- 
lionaires. When we have real publicity, we shall learn 
from the income tax reports just who these million- 
aires are. But it is safe to say that not one-half of 
them belong to or care anything about the plans of the 
plutocracy other than to prevent dog eating dog and 
being themselves devoured by yet richer men. 

The plutocracy as a developed system now owns 
control of the major enterprises in — 

1. Steam railroads. 



66 

2. Iron and steel. 

3. Coal and oil. 

4. Newspapers, magazines and books. 

5. Meats. 

6. Grain elevators. 

7. Pulp and paper. 

8. Money and banks, 

9. The national government and many state and 
city governments. 

10. The real estate of several great and many small 
cities. 

11. National and city debts. 

12. Many churches, but not all, nor half. 

13. Many colleges and universities, but not all. 

14. Wholesale trade. 

15. Foreign trade. 

16. Rubber. 

17. Lumber. 

It desires to own these enterprises clean through, 
and all others also. It desires to reduce the ordinary 
man to being an animal interested only in space and 
things and what and how, while it owns time and cause 
and why — that is, the future. It wishes to put all 
wage-earners where the colored slaves were in 1860, 
and to treat all poor men not on wage-payrolls as "poor 
white trash." It hates trade unions, closed shops, col- 
lective bargaining, independent livelihoods, including 
small tradespeople. 

The plutocracy is smart enough to spread broadcast 
such false ideas as these, viz. : 

1. Paper money is just as good as gold. How can 
the people know? They never see gold any more. 

2. The man who works hard can make a fortune 
and die rich. Give us all you've got. This is too ob- 
vious a lie to be worth answering. 

3. Saving money is the highway to success. This 



' 57 

draws the herring over the trail of the men who grew 
very rich in totally different ways from savings their 
wages. 

The poor have too many children. This is wicked. 

5. In the next world God will right the wrongs of 
this one. Endure for this life — endure us. 

6. Reformers are all weak-minded. 

7. A bank account is a man's best friend. In view 
of the ease with which a rich man can seize legally the 
bank account of a poorer enemy, this is fraud. God, 
who is Right, is a man's only worthwhile friend. 

8. Own your own home, and slave for us, because 
it will be hard for you to sell it when out of work and 
anxious to get to some other employers. 

9. It is a good thing for a great nation to have a 
great national debt; it makes the government stable, 
and develops a class opposed to revolutions. 

10. It is unsafe for the people to pick their own 
rulers; they do not know how to judge men; let us 
hand-pick them. 

Such are the ideas that the plutocracy is forever 
having reiterated in its own papers and by its own 
preachers. 

In your own town, no matter where that town is, 
you will certainly see the evidences of encroachments 
of the plutocracy. It destroyed Tom Johnson in Cleve- 
land and made Myron T. Herrick and Mark Hanna be- 
fore him. It fought James M. Cox in Dayton in 1920. 
It smashed Augustus F. Heinze in Montana and New 
York. It is after Henry Ford in the motor car busi- 
ness, of which it controls perhaps one-third, including 
General Motors. 

In some lines, the plutocracy is having poor going; 
it cannot master the farm ownership and operation 
problems yet, nor does it have good success in the re- 
tail trades. 



58 

It does not own over one-third of the tobacco busi- 
ness. It is after the motion picture industry, but is 
making a poor showing as yet. It has done but little in 
gold and silver, though it owns copper mining. It has 
failed in every fishery corporation scheme, it has been 
buncoed by its own plans for the ownership of sea- 
transportation and makes generally but poor success in 
electric railways. It has failed to secure the California 
citrus fruits lands. 

If America has actually the value of sixty billions 
of gold dollars in business of all kinds — measured by 
the gold standard, not by this pseudo-money of paper 
and ink — the plutocracy may have already the control 
of one-fourth and power in another fourth. America 
may be worth in gold in all §150,000,000,000; but even 
now, most of this is free from the plutocracy. What 
the plutocrats wish is all of it. 

What are the keys to the position of the plutocracy ? 

1. The Associated Press — news service carefully 
edited to help the plutocrats. 

2. The U. S. Steel Corporation — our biggest busi- 
ness with almost two billions of assets in the watered 
currency of today. 

3. The Standard Oil interest — thirty-two compan- 
ies all owned by the same rich men. These spread 
into Mexico and Canada, into Mesopotania and China, 
and all over the earth. 

4. Certain great banks, including the National City 
Bank of New York, the Continental and Commercial 
National Bank of Chicago, the Guaranty Trust Com- 
pany of New York, the Mellon National Bank of Pitts- 
burgh. 

5. The Ncvn^ York Central Railroad, the Reading, 
etc. (Not so much the Pennsylvania, which has 
110,000 different stockholders). 



59 

6. Certain Protestant Churches and the Mormon 
Church. 

7. Certain organs of opinion, conspicuously the 
Wall treet Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Saturday 
Evening Post, the Philadelphia Ledger, Washington 
Post, the New York Herald, the Cleveland News, the 
American Magazine. 

8. The Republican party. 

Anyone who keeps one's eyes on these will know the 
plans and intentions of the plutocracy. 

What does the plutocracy desire now ? 

The right so as to blacklist any man needing em- 
ployment or credit in business that he will be unable 
to make a living under the Stars and Stripes. It is to 
be made free of libel to represent as dishonest, or in- 
subordinate, or incompetent, or insane any man who 
resents his treatment anywhere by any employer. The 
blacklist is to be universal. 

Private personal bargaining with every employer; 
as in one great business where the employment man- 
ager refuses to talk with any two men at any one time I 
Hire-and-fire at their own will. 

Unlimited paper "money," inflated credits, inflated 
prices. 
- Liquidated wages — that is, deflated wages. 

A subsidized merchant marine. 

A higher protective tariff, always higher and 
higher. 

Taxation on the poor; exemption for the rich. 

Wars and munitions for war with a great govern- 
ment market, and with voluntary enlistments for the 
rich. 

All higher teachers of "learning" to be Republicans. 

No Democratic, Socialist, or reform magazines or 
papers of any kind ; as a step thereto second-class mail- 
ing privileges only for the Republican papers. 



60 

Suppression of mail service of the first-class to all 
persons not recommended by the Republican National 
Committee as safe. 

The present national debt to be refunded and con- 
tinued. 

How does plutocracy operate in the economic field ? 

By funding into the future all its hopes of gain and 
selling the securities — so-called — to the gullible people. 

The plutocracy began to do this far back in the 
eighteenth century. But the present century sees this 
scheme in all its glory. Enterprises are capitalized 
at sixteen per cent, twelve per cent, ten per cent, six 
per cent, and in peculiarly audacious instances at even 
four, three and two per cent of the hope of gain. Take 
a case: 

A man has an oil well and some leases. He forms 
a company and tells the suckers that his well is pay- 
ing a thousand dollars a day profit; that is, a third of 
a million a year. At sixteen per cent, this would enable 
him to capitalize at $1,800,000, which, as things go, 
would not be criminal if one could be sure that the well 
would operate (say) a hundred years. But the man 
never stops at this; he argues to the suckers that the 
leases will produce ten such wells, and that ten per cent 
on their money would be fine. The result is that he 
gets them in on the basis of a reliable income of 
$3,000,000 a year, funded at ten per cent; and he sells 
out his well for $30,000,000, less commissions to the 
promoters. 

This is not an extreme case. 

Or take the case which is historical — of the U. S. 
Steel Corporation. When its common stock was floated, 
it was not worth a dollar; the whole issue of 
$600,000,000 was water. But the stock was sold at par! 

Then the corporation, through its subsidiaries, went 
to work to put value into the common stock; and the 



61 

first thing to do was to get the Republicans into power 
under Taft to raise the steel tariff. 

The next thing to do was to water the currency so 
as to make a gold dollar do the work of two dollars 
and get the earnings into the big banks. 

This automatically inflated the inventories of the 
Steel Corporation. Soon every share of the common 
stock was worth in book value over $100. 

Where do the bondholders come in who paid gold 
dollars for the bonds ? Well, Andrew Carnegie got the 
bonds, and he gave them away to colleges and libraries, 
letting the rich out neatly. That is why colleges with 
endowments have found their endowments so reduced 
in purchasing power. But only the insiders are sup- 
posed to understand such difficult matters. 

The common people are too dull to see. 

Such is the plutocracy and such are its ways ; there- 
fore, it had to make an election to order in 1920. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND THE 
PLUTOCRACY 

The REGENCY— Florence Kling (de Wolfe) Hard- 
ing, Harry M. Daugherty, Boies Penrose, Le Roi Faine- 
ant (King Donothing) Warren Gamaliel Harding, 
Speaker of the House of Representatives Frederic H. 
Gillett, steel multi-millionaire; Senators, who are mil- 
lionaire plutocrats are, Colt, Frelinghuyson, Hale, 
Knox, Lodge, IsIcCormick, McKinley, Smoot, Warren 
(father-in-law of General J. J. Pershing), Wolcott, 
Wadsworth. 

Cabinet Secretaries — Mellon (multissimo million- 
aire), Hoover, multi-millionaire; Daugherty, Hays, 
Davis, Wallace, Fall, Weeks, Denby. Only Hughes 
loves personal liberty. 

Where does the Supreme Court stand? 

Holmes and Brandeis, both from Massachusetts, 
love freedom, and may be relied upon to oppose the 
Massachusetts bloc composed of Senator Lodge, 
Speaker Gillett and Secretary Weeks. Clark and Pitney 
have human feelings. The rest are plutocratic — White, 
McKenna, McReynolds, Day and Van Devanter. 

On the same day that the United States Senate 
voted to "pay" Colombia $25,000,000 blackmail, to help 
"oil," April 20, 1921, the New York Tribune financial 
page published this, viz.: 

Standard Oil in Colombia 

"Evidence accumulates that the Standard Oil in- 
terests consider the Colombian oil fields among the 
most promising for future operations. Several months 

62 



G3 

ago the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey acquired 
control of the International Petroleum Company, Ltd., 
and yesterday came the announccmen that this con- 
cern has acquired one of the larger islands in the har- 
bor of Barranquilla, Colombia, at the mouth of the 
Magdalena River, According to reports in the finan- 
cial district yesterday, the company will build a re- 
finery with a daily capacity of 25,000 barrels. Inter- 
national Petroleum was formerly owned by the Tropical 
Oil Companj^ controlled by the Benedum-Trees-Treat- 
Crav/ford interests, of Pittsburgh." 

Standard Oil represents billions of dollars of prop- 
erty. 

The United States Senate is four times as powerful 
as the House of Representatives, and since it has only 
a fourth as m^any members, each Senator is sixteen 
times as powerful as a Congressman in the House, The 
Speaker is the third most powerful officer of the Gov- 
ernment — the Chief Justice and the President alone 
surpassing him because of his power to form com- 
mittees even under the new rules. 

In the Senate, there are but few friends of hum.an 
rights, only a few like Norris and Kenyon ; though 
there are several who lean toward freedom as against 
plutocracy with this puppet doing the shadow work in 
the White House. Pomerene, to whom, among others, 
Harding admitted his social classificatioji as a negro; 
Borah, Cummins, Culberson, Johnson — these have not 
entirely gone over to the view that corporate property 
is immortal and divine. 

The real hope for the friends of freedom is in the 
Supremo Court, and that m_ay easily be overturned, 
now that five men are ready to quit. The best friend 
of the ordinary man in public life is Kenesaw Mountain 
Landis, the Federal Judge, which is one reason why he 
took the baseball supervision, knowing that he could 



64 

never become a Supreme Court Justice, as he merits 
becoming. Even Hughes may forget Nagna Charta and 
the United States Constitution in his present sur- 
roundings. 

A PICTURE 

Three thousand years ago, Moses came down from 
Mount Sinai with the Tables of the Law that were to 
end the CAUSES of personal hatreds among men. He 
found that while he had been listening to the thunders 
and to the voice of God, the people had made a 
GOLDEN CALF and were dancing, singing and shout- 
ing in its worship. 

In AJpril, 1921, President Warren Harding stood in 
a square in New York City and read a paper on the 
Monroe Doctrine, pledging that if any nation should 
attack the South American States, he would set afoot 
the army and hoist anchor for the navy and fight ; and 
the great men of many nations looked up at him — 
university graduates, jurists, publicists, scholars — wor- 
shipping the GOLDEN CALF of today — oil, rubber, 
guano, gold in Columbia, Peru and South America. And 
Woodrow Wilson, who brought from Versailles a new 
Table of the Law to end the causes of national hatreds 
among men, sat remembering the thunders of German 
guns against Paris and the voice of God in the hearts 
of statesmen at the Peace Conference, sat quietly in 
his library in Washington and waited and will wait un- 
til the worship of the Golden Calf is exposed once more 
as a fraud and delusion and snare of the peoples. 

Warren was thinking of the eighteen billions of 
dollars that Europe now owes to the plutocrats of 
America. 

He was thinking of Japan armed to the teeth and 
ready to strike. 



65 

He was thinking of Mexico that he may yet invade, 
as Polk invaded that land to please the slavelords. 

He was thinking of Great Britain, mistress of 
the seas, and of the American war program to build a 
navy as big as the biggest and the best of all. 

He imagined that wars must come and go forever, 

BUT 

Has slavery been outlawed? 

Has polygamy passed from civilized lands? 

Has the saloon been abolished from America foi- 
ever? 



(fcRAWF ORD 
COUNTY 

OBUGYRdS 




M A R I H 
COUNTY 

Omariojj 

i 



•Iberia CorriQrs 




!^ew Caledonl a 





Mt.GILEAD 

MORROW 
COUNTY 



LITTLE AFRICA— HARDING LAND 

When will wars end? When will the God Mars be 
slain? 



66 

In the day that America joins the League of Nations 
and ceases to obey the plutocrats in worshipping their 
golden image. 

But Warren has no son to go to war. 

Little Africa consists of three counties, where for 
a hundred years has raged the feud between the whites 
and the mestizoes. In it live almost a thousand de- 
scendants of Amos Harding and ten thousand other 
hybrids. 

At Blooming Grove Warren was born; here David 
Butler killed Amos Smith in 1849. At Steam Corners 
lives the mother of Warren's chauffeur ; a woman who 
remembers him as a baby. Here also lives other peo- 
ple who know all the history of Harding Corners. At 
Iberia was the seat of the little teacher's school to train 
for rural work to which Warren went two years. It 
was called a college, but it did not require for admis- 
sion even a rural elementary school diploma. 

At Gallon lives a man who went to school with him 
and roomed with him at Iberia. 

At New Caledonia lives the bankers who remember 
him as a school mate there. 

At Marion lives Dr. George Tryon (or Tyrone) 
Harding, Wan-en's father. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
FAKE BIOGRAPHS OF W. G. HARDING 

We have printed elsewhere in this book the valid 
and various proofs that old William Chanceller, of 
Mount Gilead, negro, and the many other friends of 
*'Nig" Harding in his boyhood days, told the truth to 
the negroes of America when they said, as they did in 
the pulpits of ther churches that Warren Gamaliel Ban- 
croft is a negro in part himself, and that he was per- 
fectly willing to admit this until ambition to rise in 
politics got the better of what little sense of truth- 
fulness he has. Here we propose to take up a few 
points from the various articles that have been printed 
about him in Republican and Baptist organs. 

In an article published by the aged Abie Gunn 
Baker in THE CHRISTIAN HERALD during the cam- 
paign, she told a story of how the mother of the mother 
of Warren discovered at church that her daughter was 
deeply interested in George Tryon Harding, his father. 
(We assume here that Tryon is the right way to spell 
this middle name, though we have stated elsewhere 
that Tyrone appears to be the family name, not Tryon). 
It appears that one day at church the daughter, their 
youngest child, failed to enter the church with her 
parents, but lingered outside. Right in the midst of 
the service, in walked her daughter on the arm of her 
soldier mate. After church Mrs. Dickerson asked the 
girl what was the meaning of the affair. She replied 
that — so Mrs. Baker says — George was already her 
husband. This makes a perfectly good story, for Mrs. 

67 



68 

Baker does not neglect to say that this young woman 
was a full year older than her mate, which, of course, 
was the truth. 




DR. GEORGE TYRON HARDING, 
Father of the President 



But, unfortunately, this story does not "gee" with 
the interview printed in McClure's Magazine after the 



69 

election from the lips of George Tryon Harding, father 
of Warren. This old man said to the interviewer that 
his wife was a year younger than himself, which was 
false, and also that he married her with the full ap- 
proval of the parents on both sides. 

Let us look into the war dates in order to get the 
truth itself from these conflicing yarns, and from cer- 
tain facts that are indisputable. 

Warren Harding was born November 2, 1865. His 
father was released from the army on furlough in 
March; it was a furlough, and he went back in the 
service. This credibly establishes the paternity of the 
boy, which no one doubts. But when did the marriage 
take place? 

Old George Tryon Harding says that they had a 
long courtship and often went out together. If so, 
when? George served three years in the army. 

Now the truth is that these two persons spent much 
of their later lives trying to agree as to dates, places, 
persons variously reported by them to have celebrated 
their wedding for them, and they never agreed. Nor 
did Mrs. Harding ever possess a marriage certificate, 
nor was any license ever issued by any court officer. 
This does not concern the legitimacy of the TEN chil- 
dren, but it happens to concern the fact that one was 
white and the other was not. It happens to explain 
why the Dickersons allowed their youngest child to 
stay at home with them for a half year after Warren 
was born ; but then made her move out. 

The true story of George Tryon Harding after this 
event when he got his white wife, wthout the courtesy 
of asking her parents, is this, viz.: They got a piece 
of land for him and made him work it. They got Doc- 
tor McCuen, the only white physician in the place, to 
allow George to study with him privately so that in the 
course of time George Tryon became first a veterinary 



70 

then a country doctor. When Warren was fifteen 
years old, the father adventured into Marion, where he 
got a practice with servants, colored people and cattle 
and horses, higher than which he never rose. We shall 
return to this later. 

In these same two articles, according to Doctor 
George, he never had any other love than his wife, 
Elizabeth Dickerson. Yet the court records of Marion 
County, Ohio, show indisputably that no sooner was 
the old lady laid in her grave in 1907, than the old man 
married a widow who had a son and four thousand dol- 
lars. She is now living in Muncie, Ind. ; three years later 
than the marriage, she got a divorce from George T. 
on the ground that he had been trying to cheat 
her out of her money. The court allowed her to take as 
her alimony a small house that belonged to one of the 
Hardings. She has come out with an affidavit that 
•her real reason for desiring a divorce was that George 
T. was too much nigger for her to endure him. She 
has been seen and interviewed often by Republican 
and Democratic reporters, but it has seemed impolitic 
to their newspapers to tell the story. Of course, her 
last name is Harding now; her first name is Endora, 
and she can be seen by any one who cares to find her 
in Muncie. 

So much for the testimony of George T. Harding 
that he never loved but one woman. This bears out 
her story that he tried to cheat the second Mrs. Hard- 
ing. But it makes him out a gay deceiver of women 
once more in his old age. Of course, he deceived his 
real mate, Elizabeth Dickerson, by proposing to wish 
to support her. 

The old man and the old writer of the Harding 
story have both tried to make out that he was a good 
provider for his large family, and that Mrs. Elizabeth 
was a very happy woman. 



71 

Unfortunately, for the beauty of this story, it hap- 
pens that the very naive Warren has himself spoiled it 
by spilling some facts. One thing that he has said in 
an interview is that whenever the children got hungry, 
they either went down the road to Grandmother Dick- 
erson, or up the road to Grandfather Harding and got 
food in plenty. Another of these naive statements was 
that they always ate at their grandparents on feast 
days and often on Sundays. Still another was that the 
children all worked at the neighbors' as soon as they 
were big enough to do anything at all. Still another 
statement v/as that their only real poverty was in re- 
spect to clothes. Now we have but to add two or three 
more facts to get the whole situation. One fact is that 
Mrs. Dickerson Harding, mother of Warren, went out 
as midwife and also as nurse and even as servant fre- 
quently. A second is that the George Tryon family got 
their little farms from their blood kin as tenants. A 
third is that all the children had very much cut-down 
educations. In other words, the father, mother and 
children were drifters in a rich countryside, protected 
from poverty by the good nature of all their neighbors 
and by the pity that they felt for a white woman with 
a black husband, so-called. Of course, this was un- 
usual, though there were many negroes about. Mixed 
unions were not the common thing. Fifty years ago, 
more than half of the Blooming Grove people had negro 
or Indian blood, or both. 

Another of the pleasant fictions in which the Re- 
publicans have indulged is the printing of the alleged 
birthplace of Warren. This is a house only thirty 
years old. His log cabin shack was burned down long 
ago. Indeed the family occupied it only a few months, 
and the truth is that his mother gave him birth in her 
own bed chamber at the Dickerson house, for at this 
time the two were not yet living in a home together. 



72 

We have the affidavit from the present Dickerson 
family that they acquiesced in the mating solely be- 
cause their sister was pregnant when they found it out 
that she intended to consort with this negro youth 
from the army. 

It is important here to recall that of the more than 
3,000,000 boys in blue, no less than 275,000 were 
negroes, and no less than 700,000 were foreign-born. 
Colored men and boys with firearms helped to whip the 
Southern whites, who did not arm their loyal negroes. 

Mrs. Harding herself often said that she "married" 
George T. only because he wore soldier stripes and 
blue. 

It may be worth while to take the picture of her as 
she is portrayed, first, by the Republicans ; second, by 
her neighbors ; third, by the photographer, 

Mrs. Baker says that she was tall and willowy, with 
a lovely singing voice, and very industrious. She had 
light brown hair, and was pale. 

The neighbors report that she was always over- 
worked ; that she did not have very much interest in 
anything except babies and sick people; and that she 
was always penniless. They say that she was very 
amiable. 

The picture of her that has come down shows her 
at forty years of age, with very dark hair, a thin, an- 
xious face, and poorly dressed. On the other hand, her 
children are fat and cheerful in their early pictures. 

Of course, Mrs. Elizabeth Harding was a very good 
woman, but having poor judgment; else she would not 
have taken up with this imposter. She had TEN chil- 
dren and was as good a mother to them as any woman 
in poverty can be. 

She was the youngest of all her family, their pet; 
the Dickersons were among the superior people of the 
neighborhood, far above the Hardings. Her union with 



73 

this George Tryon was a heavy blow to her old parents. 
It came when she was twenty-one years old, and she 
was wthout anything more than a very elementary 
rural schooling. Her parents and her mate never cared 
for books ; nor did she make a reading man of her son, 
Warren. 

It is also to be remembered that these ten children 
were never at home together. Warren, the eldest, had 
cut loose long before the youngest was bom. 

There are, of course, hundred of stories afloat about 
how the President of the United States behaved when 
he was a boy, and what he did. These are not of the 
Lincoln type. There are no stories of study late into 
the night ; or of kindness to animals. They are indeed 
the stories of a people who were crude and illiterate 
and who took some of the serious things of like as 
jokes. One Harding himself tells. Once when he was 
going to Grandfather Harding's to spend Thanksgiving 
with them, on the way near the farmhouse he saw the 
turkey gobbler that was to be the piece de resistance 
for the repast, and he threw a stone and killed it. His 
grandfather could not find the bird, and they had to 
have chicken instead; but later the dead fowl was 
found and they charged Warren with the killing. This 
he stoutly denied until they proved it on him, when one 
and all took the affair as funny. This does not strike 
one as a white people's way of dealing with such a mat- 
ter; and when one looks upon the face of Charles A. 
Hfirding in his daughter's home in Blooming Grove, 
one does not take the face for that of a pure Caucasian, 
either. 

All the neighbors report that Warren was very dis- 
obedient when a child and had to be soundly thrashed 
by one or the other parent ; he had an especially violent 
temper. Once he was expelled from school, and the 



74 

teacher would not take him back ; but the family moved 

to another farm, and he started on again. 

The peregrinations of these George Tryon Hardings 
were from Blooming Grove to Steam Corners, a mile 
away ; here now lives the very aged mother of his motor 
car chauffeur. She lives a widow with an old man a 
widower. This old woman is a chair-bound invalid of 
large size, with many stories to tell of Warren, whom 
she tended when he was a baby. There was a story 
diligently circulated by the Republicans throughout 
Ohio among the white people that their candidate was 
born in Pennsylvania and was not a Blooming Grove 
man at all. The women of several cities still believe 
this, and old Mrs. Blacksten, which is the name of this 
aged woman, was furious at the denial that this par- 
ticular man, for whom her son worked, was the Repub- 
lican candidate for the Presidency. She also insisted 
that she had often seen him naked and that he was 
dark like all the Hardings. But on this point, the testi- 
mony of all was unanimous. 

She admitted, as did all the Hardings, that there 
was a story afloat that they had negro blood ; but this 
did not interest her. Negroes were too common to 
disturb her peace. 

Another story is that when Warren was about 
twelve years old he was employed to do some field 
work in September; he was to get fifty cents for the 
day; and he worked just five minutes, saying then that 
the work was too hard; it was shucking corn. This 
story is told by the son of the farmer who employed 
Warren, who at this time had no power to stick to any- 
thing. Perhaps if he had possessed this power, he 
would have not become useful to the Republican pluto- 
crats later; he does not possess much pertinacity even 
yet. 

The rural schools lasted about five months in Mor- 
row County at this period, and Warren went to them 



75 

until he was fifteen years of age, though he was not a 
regular pupil in attendance nor at all apt in his 
studies. 

From Steam Corners he went to New Caledonia, 
where there still live many persons who remember his 
few years there quite well. Two of them run the bank 
there. He seldom knew his lessons; but big for his 
age and hearty. They always called him "Nigger," be- 
cause he looked so black when wet with the water when 
they went swimming together. 

At Iberia there was a small school with the grand- 
iloquent name "Ohio Central College." This name has 
fooled all the Republican biographers of Warren, who 
imagine that he was very brilliant and got into col- 
lege at fifteen years of age. These people do not know 
the educational history of Ohio, and they mean not to 
learn it. 

This institution was founded in order to educate 
the fugitive slaves. It was a one-building philanthropic 
affair maintained by gifts from religious people in 
small sums. It never had any endowment. The whole 
affair represented an investment of but a few thousand 
dollars. To this day, a college can be founded in Ohio 
by any one who gets $100,000 together. Iberia Col- 
lege never saw any such sum. It had sometimes two 
or three teachers, some times four or five. The boys 
and the girls had to room out where they could, except 
such as did manual labor for their tuitions, for whom 
there were provided in the recitation hall, the only 
building, some beds, occupied by two or three together. 
The school had a very general collection of studies. 
They took an illiterate and gave him lessons in read- 
ing. They took a big boy or girl who wished to be- 
come a rural teacher and taught him some United 
States history and grammar and arithemetic. This 
was the course that Warren pursued. In all, at this 



76 

time there were forty or fifty young persons all from 
the neighborhood going to Iberia College. There were 
no courses such as the title indicates; none. Even to- 
day, "a business college" is not a college. 

At seventeen years of age, Warren quit this school 
and, according to his own statement, went to teaching 
winters and to doing teamster's work summers; and 
also did some railroading. Professor Chancellor and 
the investigators for several newspapers, after spend- 
ing several weeks upon this phase of the matter after 
the election was over, and he was free to do as he 
pleased with their help, found that no school in which 
Warren ever taught could be located, which proves 
nothing, because many rural schools have been burned 
down. None of the country people remembered that he 
ever taught school. Nor did they remember that he 
ever did any teaming in that neighborhood. 

What was found was that in this period, viz., while 
Warren was from seventeen to nineteen years of age, 
a man from Morrow County named Harding served in 
the United States army, but deserted in the very years 
that Warren says that he taught school. But this again 
proves nothing, for there were hundreds of Hardings ; 
and the War Department has declined to furnish the 
evidence on the ground that it never helps to incrimi- 
nate any man. 

But it so happens that when Warren was seventeen 
years of age, he did not know how to play upon any 
musical instrument, but that at twenty years of age, 
he knew several. It also happens that he has a very 
good personal knowledge of many things about the 
army. It also happens that he hates military life and 
is a pacifist. All this proves nothing. A physician 
who had occasion to administer medical treatment to 
Warren for several years after he moved there, says 
that Warren had a mliitai 3' way with him and gave 



77 

evidence of having had troubles sometimes associated 
with military life. But there is no legal evidence on 
this point. 

He did arrive in Marion when he was just about 
twenty years of age ; he went there to join his father. 
The next five years are all within the evidence. Many 
persons have written them up. Jack Warwick, in par- 
ticular, did so in Republcan newspapers; he had been 
his printing partner for a while. 

But hundreds of persons now alive in Marion and 
elsewhere remember this, the worst period of Hard- 
ing's life. 

He came to Marion to a fiimily hard pressed to get 
food and shelter. He was a roustabout. He did what- 
ever his hands could find to do, and he did not do 
these things well. He gave no evidence to anyone of 
having any future. 

At this time, Marion was undergoing a very rapid 
industral development ; and there v/ere many strangers 
coming into the city, especially foreigners and negroes. 
No one ever then thought of Warren as anything else 
than a colored man. He was still called "Nig." 

He did not take up any regular work, did not try 
to become a machinist in the steel works. He felt out 
of the current. But he had plenty of muscular strength, 
and good wits, and by keeping on with his parents, to 
whom he had now returned, he managed to get along. 
He was a persistent frequenter of saloons and played 
all the familiar games, crap included. He liked to go 
to the skating rink, and get in with the various girls. 

Marion never was a clean city, and Warren felt at 
home in it soon. A few persons were making fortunes 
in it; and they cared nothing whatever save for their 
money. 

The man who roomed with Warren Harding for the 
two years that he spent in reviewing the elementary 



78 

courses in preparation for becoming a teacher, himself 
a pro-German during the World War, as he now insists, 
but who voted against him all the same in November, 
1920, explains that the only peculiarities of Warren 
during the two years that he knew him were two : He 
liked to talk all the time in the debates that the boys 
had and to give declamxations and to write, though no 
one could understand what he had to say, and he liked 
to make friends; he would make up with anyone. He 
had outgrown the childish hot temper and was notably 
affable. In other words, the higher instinct from his 
superior heredity in this respect were getting control. 

Now this explains why Warren became a printer 
and joined with two partners in a little paper. The city 
had one paper, which was successful; but the Hard- 
ings were red-hot Republicans, as why should not all 
G. A. R. negroes be Republican? The leading paper 
was Democratic. 

The Republican party has been a machine for ex- 
tracting more than a hundred million dollars every 
year for the G. A. R. pensions out of the ultimate con- 
sumers for the benefit of the protective tariff lords 
and of the "old soldiers." It set free the negroes and 
it gave to them the franchise. Negroes belong in the 
Republican party. 

The problem was how to get press and paper to- 
gether and get out a daily issue. 

Originally, it appears that the Hardings became as- 
sociated with this fantastic enterprise in the following 
manner: About 1884 from a small printing office in 
Marion was occasionally issued a small paper dubbed 
the scandal sheet and whose proprietors were in finan- 
cial straights. J. O. Sickles, with a little money, and 
Jack Warwick with a little experience, in a spirit of 
venture, took over the plant. As natives of Caledonia 
they knew Warren Harding, who at this time was 



71) 

temporarily working on the Democratic paper of 
Marion. He also had a little experience and better ac- 
quaintance in Marion and having nothing else to offer 
him to join them in the enterprise, Sickles and War- 
wick offered him a third interest to join them in their 
shop. So the arrangement stood until Sickles withdrew 
full of experience but lighter in pocketbook. His in- 
terest was disposed of to Dr. George Tryon Harding 
for promissory note and several vacant lots of little 
value. Eventually the note was paid, which accounts 
for the doctor's claim to having financed the enter- 
prise. The doctor admitted his inability to consider the 
deal for cash. 

At this time he was forty-three years old, encum- 
bered with a little real estate of doubtful value and the 
care of eigh living children, a ninth and middle one hav- 
ing died just previously of diphtheria, under his per- 
sonal care. The oldest man of the group was Jack 
Warwick, so far as we can find out. Warren set type, 
wrote news and fed the presses ; occasionally he got 
advertisements. Their support, small as it was, came 
from three sources — soreheads against the Democratic 
daily, bitter partisan Republicans, and persons who 
sympathized with the young men. They were bucking 
a monopoly at a time when Marion had some ten 
thousand people. 

What with paper to pay for even at the then low 
price of paper, and the small subscription list, and very 
few advertisers, generally the week showed no money 
to distribute for the livings of the partners. At this 
time, Warren borrowed money from friends — "hand- 
outs." There are persons who then lived in Marion and 
are still alive who say to this day Warren has never 
paid them back. True or false, such is his reputa- 
tion. We have explained elsewhere how, with this 



80 

reputation, he was able, in 1920, to get a large major- 
ity of the votes. 

It has been reported that the change in the original 
partnership was due to the progressive tendency of 
Warren and the disagreement about the installment 
of a telephone in the office, but his partner says that 
the change was due to financial causes of which one 
was the result of a trip by Warren to Chcago, taking 
with him $150 of partnership money with which to 
secure a second-hand press for the shop. 

He stayed ten days, came back penniless, without 
having shipped or paid for the press, but with the tale 
of a swell time. Jack Warwick then undertook the trip 
with complete success, at less cost of time and money. 
Not long after, Sickles left the business. Whether this 
or Warren's version is the real cause of Sickles leav- 
ing, one thing is true, and that is, that Sickles is the 
man who started Warren G. Harding in the newspaper 
game. 

At this time there was in Marion a very rich man, 
said to have been at the time the richest man in the 
little city, a banker named Amos Kiing, His age was 
about fiftyfive. He had three children, two sons and 
a daughter. This girl had united herself with a man 
named Harry de Wolf, but she did not take the situa- 
tion as very serious, frequenting the skating rink of 
the little city and neglecting her one child, a boy, and 
this mate. What we here report is a court record. 

So flagrant was her style of living that her father 
would have nothing to do with her. Unhappily, her 
mother was dead. 

Harry decided to get an annulment of the mating. 
Each set up a date when an alleged wedding took place. 
Harry set a date that showed that the boy was bom 
soon after the union; while Florence set up a much 
earlier date. In he court on the show-down, it ap- 



81 

pearecl that there had never been any wedding. The 
court would not even construe the case as a common 
law marriage, but did in a fashion release Harry, who 
soon after married and went to Colorado, where, 
after begetting two more children who concern this 
record, he died. He claimed he got tuberculosis from 
drinking, and that the conduct of his first mate drove 
him to drink. 

At the skating rink long before the annulment of 
the relation by the court, Warren became acquainted 
with Florence, as did many other men. Gradually, in 
her way, but with inherited thrift, she acquired enough 
money to buy a house of her own. This house was not 
given to her by her father, as the Republicans falsely 
allege. 

Years went by. Florence Kling de Wolfe, so-called, 
made it a habit to spend hours every day at the print- 
ing shop, often publicly caressng Warren. She begged 
him to marry her. Warren did not see this at first; 
but in view of the saving of rent, he did take her as 
his wife. Kling was even angrier than ever. He 
bought the mortgage on the building rented by Warren 
and his partners and tried to force them out. The legal 
contests resulting are a part of the common gossip of 
Marion to this day. Florence Kling became business 
manager of the paper to show her father what blood 
could do. She never went to his house, and Warren 
was forbidden to go there. 

This warfare between Amos H. Kling and his son- 
in-law and daughter is what made each of them what 
they have become. To fight the richest man of a city 
is in itself a course that creates sympathy. New peo- 
ple came in who did not remember the old situation, 
and who would not believe the old stories. There was 
no sudden reform in the young man or his six-years'- 
older wife; but they had a fight to keep alive, to get 



82 

I'ood and clothing. Warren never ceased to frequent 
the saloons and to play poker, which he playec^ well 
enough not to lose money. But he began to see that 
work is a necessity. His notion that Amos would re- 
lent and give money to his daughter died out, and there 
grew in its place a desire to show the old man that he 
could get along, without him. Florence went among 
the bankers and borrov/ed money to put the STAR on 
its feet. They sold stock on the co-operative plan to 
their own printers; mostly they employed women and 
young men ; but they got a very good editor named Van 
Fleet. And the Republicans, needing an organ, helped 
them more and more. 

There is one picture given by Warwick that helps 
to an understanding of the relations of Warren to the 
others. Every few days he would go out and invest a 
half dollar in chewing tobacco that he tied by a string 
to a post in the composing room, and he and the others 
would take their jacknives and whittle off a piece as 
long as it lasted. He was what in Ohio they call "com- 
mon," meaning that he was just like the other fel- 
lows; he "put on no dog." There was a considerable 
income from job advertising — circulars, posters, etc. — 
from the tradespeople, theaters, etc. To this, Warren 
gave much personal attention, having almost nothing 
to do with the money affairs and the outer office. 

Warwick left the business and moved on, as peri- 
patetic printers will. He says frankly in the series of 
articles that the Republican papers ran, that he had 
no idea that Warren Harding would ever amount to 
anything or ever rise to great heights. 

All Ohio people talk politics, and talk it most of the 
time. Poker games are a very common scene for 
political plans. Newspaper offices talk politics. These 
were the two great interests of Warren, who saw so 



83 

much of his wife at the printing shop that he did not 
bother to spend his evenings with her. 

About the time when Harry de Wolfe died in Colo- 
rado, without accomplishing his threat to kill Warren 
before he did go himself, and the time when the one 
de Wolfe child died, who had been born to Mrs. Hard- 
ing (though de Wolfe at times disputed its paternity, 
which he attributed to another man, however, than 
Warren), the big printer conceived the notion that he 
would like to get some of this easy political money. 

It is well to pause here and consider some of the 
peculiar social ideas of Ohio. One is that teachers, 
preachers and officeholders belong to the inferior 
classes. There are but few States in which these three 
lines are held in as deep contempt as in Ohio. But edi- 
tors were considered even lower, and printers still 
lower. The big men in Ohio, the high-class people, are 
the rich, especially the bankers. There were so many 
colleges — seventy-five at this time used the name — 
that educational degrees and diplomas were at a dis- 
count. With such an institution as Ohio Central Col- 
lege using the name we need not wonder at this. Warren 
thought that a political office would get him some 
money, and he desired office for this reason alone. 

He was now thirty-four years old — it was 1899 — 
and he happened to live in a senatorial district of the 
State where the Democrats always had easy pickings 
for election, but where the Democratic Senator was 
about through. Few Senators served over two or three 
terms. A very weak man was being put up by the 
Democrats. Warren had met Daugherty, and he now 
got some advice from him. Daugherty agreed to send 
out some fine speakers and to make a big fight for 
him. Even then Daugherty knew that Warren was 
a negro, but he thought that for this very reason, if 



84 

Warren should win, he would be a pliant servant for 
himself in the Legislature. 

Warren got the nomination easilj^ and all the Re- 
publicans anticpaled that he would be thoroughly- 
licked, of course. 

The Marion district lies just northwest of Colum- 
bus, the home of Daugherty. It was easy to send out 
many speakers. One more Senator for Daugherty at 
this time in but thirty-three in all meant a lot to him 
in his fight for power. Daugherty was then forty 
years old. There was a tremendous fight, but it was 
made not by Warren Harding, but by old Amos Kling 
against Daugherty and against his son-in-law as a 
nigger. 

Amos was then about seventy years old. But he 
jumped into the fray and canvassed every county, tak- 
ing several men with him. He had made many enemies 
by refusing loans to farmers. He was not a good pub- 
lic speaker. Warren was kept hidden from the people 
who had never seen him in order not to verify the 
charge that he was colored. He spoke only where he 
was already known. The people were told that the 
rich man was "a mean old thing," who had let his 
daughter go to work and would not help her in her 
financal troubles. 

Negroes were all lined up sub rosa for their colored 
brother; and the foreigners were told to vote for the 
poor man against the candidate of the rich man. 

The election was close; but the colored man won, 
as colored men have often won in Ohio. The talk of 
race prejudice was worked where it would work, and 
the color was denied wherever that seemed advisable. 
The result was that Warren Harding was put on the 
track that eventually brought him to the White House. 

His nomination for Lieutenant Governor was 
brought about in 1904 in much the same way and he 



85 

was carried in on a Republican landslide to Roosevelt. 
Save Warren Harding himself, no one knows just 
what he got financially out of these six years of office- 
holding other than salary and mileage — the total of 
which was about ten thousand dollars. After that his 
connection with THE STAR was not taken by him 
very seriously ; he did some work as a printer, but in 
the main his time was spent in scheming to get into 
the United States Senate. He ran for the nomination 
several times, once against Daugherty himself — in or- 
der that one or the other should have it. Both lost. 
But the Marion newspaper man benefitted in indirect 
ways by all this political publicity. There are always 
interests that desire newspaper support, and he was 
given small holdings in various local enterprises for his 
influence — including a brewery and a bank. The total 
was not large, but it was all on the right side of the 
ledger. 

His health was often in sour condition from heavy 
di'inking and night excesses. Several attacks are 
known to have occurred of delirum tremens, when he 
was taken to the Marion sanitarium managed by Doc- 
tor C. E. Sawyer, now Admiral of the United States 
navy, and personal attendant upon his very distin- 
guished patient. 

Let no person imagine that THE MARION STAR 
was a great money maker. The Hardings together 
have never entirely owned it. There have been other 
stockholders and heavy debts. It is improbable that 
the average amount of money available to the Hard- 
ings from the property from 1904 to 1920 has been 
over three thousand dollars a year; and it is very 
doubtful whether in any year it ever has earned for 
them over five or six thousand dollars. It is no gold 
mine. And it is to be remembered that this represents 




the labor of Mrs. Harding rather than of her husband 
since 1899. 



87 

When Amos Kling died of the disappointment in 
seeing his plans to ruin his son-in-law defeated and to 
rid himself of the disgrace of having such a person in 
his famly, he left an estate of over a million dollars; 
but not one dollar to them. The sentimental race 
equalitarians may object to this. Strangely enough, 
he made some provision for the other two children of 
poor de Wolfe, not much but enough to show that he 
had a warm heart after all. These are the two chil- 
dren whom Harding and his wife in one interview 
claimed as their own, together \^'ith the two little chil- 
dren of one of these two, already now married, but 
without a drop of Kling or Harding blood. 

How can these things be? 

How did Jezebel ever get to be Queen over Israel? 
How came Nero, Caligula, Galba, Claudius to rule in 
Rome? How did Catherine de Medici ever get her 
power? How did it happen that Aaron Burr was once 
Vice-President of the United States? 

He was defeated for the Presidency itself by ONE 
VOTE. 

There are m.any stories told of how seriously 
Kling took this marriage of his daughter to Warren 
Harding. To one sheriff of a county in the district he 
told that it was hell just to be alive with such a per- 
son closely related to himself. 

A man who had been a business associate for many 
years, but who witnessed the wedding of the two (de- 
scribed by Kling in unprintable words), was ordered 
never to speak to him again ; and shut out from all 
loans from the Kling bank. 

Much has been made of an alleged reconciliation be- 
tween Warren and Kling. The facts are that in his 
extreme old age, Kling decided to marry again; and 
the woman whom he chose, believed that his hatred for 
Florence was shortening his life. She persuaded him 



88 

to allow his daughter to come to see him occasionally. 

At the time of his trip to Florida, the newspapers 
were told that many years before then, Warren had 
visited Amos Kling in his Florida home. This was not 
Amos Idling at all, but a son of one of Kling's brothers. 
And it was not a visit but a mere afternoon call for 
a few minutes. 

Amos Kling had no Florida home; he went there 
several times to stay in hotels. 

It will, of course, be said that he should have 
brought up his daughter better ; if so, she would never 
have bought Warren Harding for a husband ; and with- 
out her to pay his bills, he would have been a plain 
failure and soon out of life itself. She has been what- 
ever good genius he has had. She has run his cam- 
paigns for him, and she has written the best speeches 
he ever read. The rise of Florence Kling will remind 
students of history of Theodosia, wife of Justinian, and 
of Catharine de Medici in their origin and success. 

The campaign for the United States Senatorship 
in 1914 tells the inside of Ohio politics. Daugherty 
and Harding had been getting in bad for several years ; 
1914 saved them. 

Until Judson Harmon became Governor of Ohio 
and Timothy S. Hogan became State Attorney General 
for various vicious election methods, Ohio had nothing 
to learn from, and something to teach to, even the 
Republican Gas Ring in Philadelphia. 

Hogan now has a law office from which he can 
look down upon the State Capitol of Ohio in Colum- 
bus ; in ability and character, in personality, and in his 
actual record until he was unhorsed by the righteous- 
ness that is in him, he is one of the best men Ohio 
or any other State has ever produced. 

We hear much of the ignorance of the country folk 
in the Appalachians. They are far away from civiliza- 



89 

tion; but the ignorance of many country folk in Ohio 
is quite as dense. They read no papers ; they have no 
books, perhaps not even a Bible; magazines are un- 
known to them. They do know that there is a Govern- 
ment at Washington, but its relations to themselves 
are unguessed at. They do not understand the govern- 
ment even of Ohio. One such county was Adams ; not 
far from Cincinnati, upon the Ohio River. Here voters 
were bought not "in blocks of five" as in the old days 
of 1880 in Indiana, but wholesale; everyone sold his 
vote. This county was not the only offender; but it 
was one of the worst. Into this county Attorney Gen- 
eral Hogan went and punished those who had broken 
the Ohio Corrupt Practice Act, the convicted offenders 
include both the bribers and the bribed. By it no one 
can legally talk about politics within a certain pre- 
scribed distance of the polling booth. And only the 
regularly appointed officers can help even a blind 
man to vote. 

By convicting and securing the punishment of some 
hundreds of persons, Hogan made himself hated by 
politicians of all parties. He exposed too much. 

In addition, he is a very brilliant speaker, and many 
leaders hated him as being far abler than themselves. 

And he is a Roman Catholic, There is a notion 
in some parts of Ohio that a Roman Catholic is a 
good deal worse than an infidel or an atheist. In some 
parts of Ohio it is taught to the children that even 
an Episcopalian is a Catholic and an enemy of the 
Republic. To be a Roman Catholic Democrat is to 
arouse a fury of resentment in some persons who pro- 
fess to be disciples of Jesus Christ. But the Democrats 
decided to risk the United States Senatorial campaign 
in Ohio all the same upon this glorious apostle of 
honest government; and Daughertj^ accepted the chal- 
lenge by running Warren G. Harding against him. It 



90 

looked to many as though Warren was in for another 
defeat; but what with the anti-Catholics, the wets, the 
G. A. R., the negroes, the politicians of both parties, 
the hide-bound high-tariff and stand-pat Republicans, 
the race-sentimentalists who believe in race-equality 
provided it does not concern their own daughters, 
Daugherty proved to be the better guesser, and Warren 
Harding went in in the off-year 

In commenting upon this result, Professor William 
Estabrook Chancellor, the white man, not the colored 
man named William Chancellor who worked for the 
Republicans, said in a letter to one of his friends in 
New England: "You say that the election of Hard- 
ing as Senator proves that he cannot have any negro 
blood. Just how you figure this out I cannot under- 
stand. You are a Republican and in politics. Suppose 
that a brilliant Roman Catholic attorney, who hates 
corporations when they are dishonest, had shown up 
your party to the tune of several hundred bribers and 
bribed, would you have voted for him or for a colored 
man who was loyal to your party? You are yourself 
a rabid race-equalitarian. You belong to the people 
who voted to give the franchise to the negro because 
your fathers voted for Charles Sumner. There are 
400,000 negroes in Ohio. Would you have played them 
double in this case? I judge not. What the vote for 
Harding proved was not that he has no colored blood, 
but that a majority of Buckeyes, of whom I am one by 
birth, and two generations of forefathers, like a com- 
placent, convenient black Republican tool better than 
a fine-spirited white Democrat; and it proves nothing 
else." 

They now have their black man in the White House, 
and after a while they will learn what this means. 
That light house will prove to be a track combers lure. 

It is a curious thing that in every group photograph 



91 

ever taken where Warren appears he has shown the 
deepest color. This was commented upon even in 
1914 — what does it mean? When a person has negro 
color it shows in photographs because they register 
depth of pigmentation. There is no way to avoid this 
except to be skinned and have a new skin grafted on. 

It was about 1906 when he left the Lieutenant 
Governship that Warren Harding began seriously to 
try to get rid of the story that he has colored blood. 

Then also his father began to show some spirit in 
the matter. But when Warren arrived in Washington, 
he met there in the Senate several men who knew 
the truth. One by one he took them aside and asked 
them to keep the matter quiet, admitting its truth. 
One such was Senator Atalee Pomerene, who, however, 
has told many persons about the affair. Pomerene 
has now given out that he will not run again in 1922 
for the United States Senatorship from Ohio. He can- 
not stomach the notion of serving in the Senate under 
a negro President. 

There are many stories about this consciousness 
that they are now playing a part, both father and son. 

In 1905, there was preaching in Marion a man who 
is still a preacher, but now located elsewhere with both 
Republicans and Democrats in his congregation. This 
good man reports that one evening in the year cited. 
Doctor George Tryon Harding told his wife, in a con- 
versation not sought by her upon a public street corner, 
that because he was a negro, he found it hard to make 
a living, and asked her to ask her husband to recom- 
mend h*m to the people of their church. A very close 
relative of this preacher, then and now living in 
Marion, says that the wife reported this to her, and 
that she saw Doctor George Tryon Harding soon there- 
after and that he admitted saying this, and asked her 
for help. At this time, his oldest son was Lieutenant 



92 

Governor, and a daughter was teaching in the Marion 
High School, where she still teaches. 

When Professor Chancellor went first to Marion, 
on the errand of trying to find out the record of this 
man — he has often given public addresses there — five 
high school boys, all of the same car, told him that 
they always called Harding a "nigger," and his sister 
also. One of these boys was himself a negro, and he 
was the only one among them who was not wearing 
a Cox button. As we have seen, Marion, however, went 
for Harding; and we have given the reasons. 

Yet the Republican Board of Education and City 
School Superintendent have, since the election, named 
the city high school, the Harding High School, and 
thereby insulted all the white youth in attendance; 
they have done more than this — they have forbidden, in 
what was once free America, their teachers to discuss 
the politics. 

It is perfectly safe to predict that — 

1. The name of the Harding High School will be 
changed soon. 

2. This order for silence will be rescinded soon, for 
it is not only infamous, but is also detractive to the Re- 
publicans themselves. It so happens that there is on 
the Marion (Harding) High School staff a woman 
who was Chairman of the Marion County Democratic 
Committee, and who in that capacity made speeches 
about the League of Nations ; of course, she knew the 
truth about the color of the Hardings, and she told it. 
The order forbidding her to talk politics was passed 
after the election. Next time, the women of Mai-ion 
County will vote Democratic because that order inter- 
feres WITH THE GOD-GIVEN RIGHT 0?^ ALL 
WOMEN TO TALK. 

Of course, this order is contrary to the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. 



So was the order to seize and destroy the manu- 
scripts of Professor Chancellor. 

Let the Republicans fill up the cup of their in- 
iquity; they Vv'iU drink it themselves. Like Haman, 
they have built a gallows upon which they themselves 
will be hung until they are dead, as dead as the Whig 
and Federalist parties. 

There lives in Marion a native-born old man, who 
has been a judge of court, a cripple and an invalid in 
his old age. 

After the election, getting a six-foot young pro- 
German, with a German name, to help him, Doctor 
George Tryon Harding, cane in hand, on a public street 
attacked this old man because he told exactly what 
the Black Republicans had been paid to tell other Black 
Republicans that the Hardings are niggers. This was 
fully reported in the newspapers, even the Republican 
ones, which took great delight in the anecdote. 

But it made Democratic votes all the same. 1922 
and 1924 Vv-ill show a come-back. 

Suppose that the Republicans could silence free 
speech in America, as they have gagged the press v/ith 
money. Where would their own children come in? 
You can stop, let our Republican neighbors understand 
this, free public speech; but you can never stop mouth- 
to-ear gossip and slander; but can you stop sub rosa 
pamphlets ? Try it and see. What tyrants have failed 
to do, the plutocracy will quickly fail in trying to do. 

A gang of Republicans at night entered the office 
of a rich old Democrat in Marion and stole all his 
papers. He had been corresponding with other free 
Americans about the negro ancestry of Warren Hard- 
ing. Cannot the Democrats retaliate? Where is this 
crime going to end? 

Old Doctor George Tryon Harding, everyone of 
whose neighbors resents his presence on their street, 



94 

in his interview with McClure's Magazine ended the 
stuff by saying that he had some scores to settle 
with those who have been lying about him. He him- 
self told one of the richest Republican women in the 
city that he knew that he had negro blood and that 
some people said that he had Indian blood. This same 
admission was made many times in the presence of 
former business partners of Warren. For what is he 
seeking Indian revenge? In order himself to be am- 
bushed some night and taken away to some remote 
cave for a few years? You reap what you sow. 

Truth is that the Republicans are sowing the wind, 
and that, of course, they must reap the whirlwind. 

Already old Mrs. George M. Pullman has died of 
the shame of the discovery that she spent two mil- 
lion dollars trying to get her son-in-law chosen for the 
Republican nomination. Half-Indian Jake L. Hamon 
is dead in the same horrible mess. Where is this Re- 
publican horror to end? They are inviting the wrath 
of God. 

What James I. could not kill; what cost Charles I. 
his head; this is the spirit of liberty. For this Peter 
Zenger, in 1735, made his fight in New York, for the 
right to find and speak the truth in the fear of the 
Almighty only. 

Nevertheless pressed by his ambitions and by his 
brunet-aged wife, Warren Harding has been trying to 
convince himself that he has too little negro blood to 
count. He is too ignorant to know that THE PAST IS 
ADAMANT. It takes a dull man to try to change it. 

In this fierce struggle in his mind, WaiTen went, 
in 1915, to Washington. He was absent in the next 
five years from 1300 roll calls for votes. He voted wet 
when he did vote, and he voted anti-suffrage. He made 
very few speeches, none of them long. Every time the 
tariff was mentioned he showed some interest. There 



95 

are several reasons for this. He stopped what little 
schooling he has experienced when he was seventeen 
years old, an epoch when the school world was under 
the control of high protective tariff teachers; and he 
has learned nothing since. The other reason is that 
the manufacturers of Marion are high protective tariff 
men, and own the banks also ; he has always catered to 
them in THE STAR. That is why THE STAR exists. 
Every negro desires a master. He reverences the 
man who can tell him what is what and how to do it; 
he never asks why; that is too much for his type of 
brain tissue. Who has financed his political cam- 
paigns anyway? 

No poorer record was ever made in the United 
States Senate by a man serving five and a half years 
than was made by this man ; he was merely a creature 
of his creators, and not a good one in some ways at 
that. But he looked well, and he prevented a free 
trade Democrat from filling the place and the news- 
papers also with his arguments. 

While much more might be told in detail of the 
record of Hardng until the political campaign of 1920, 
there is nothing worth telling beyond more corrobora- 
tion of the main point. He was in training, severe 
training for the business of doing just what his mas- 
ters of the plutocracy were to tell him as President 
to do. 

There were fully fifty thousand negroes in New 
England at the time when the Hardings say they moved 
out of Connecticut. Many other negroes also moved 
out. 

There are still negroes and Indians of almost pure 
blood living in Caucasian clothes and according to Cau- 
casian manners in New England. Proving (?) that 
they came from New England does not prove that the 



»6 

Harding blood is all white. They evidently know 
nothing- of New England. 

It is quite possible that the Harding pose is a com- 
bination of Indian chief and Ethiopian chief also. It 
worked beautifully in the Presidential campaign of 
1920. As it had also worked in the Senate. 



CHAPTER IX 
RACES OF MANKIND 

It is wicked to assert the equality of men or of 
races. 

The glory of men is in that all differ — one star 
differeth from another. 

It is wicked to desire the amalgamation of all races ; 
and only the unscientific imagine that this will ever 
come to pass in America. 

Climates vary too much; the original germ plasms 
differ too much. Ideas differ too much. Abilities to 
make livings and other adjustments to one another and 
to the earth differ. 

The man who believes that ultimately all Ameri- 
cans will be light saffron :v ellow knows nothing of his- 
torical anthropology. 

The differences between men and the races of men 
concern everything that man is. 

Men have different gods; they have different 
brains, different skins, different sense, powers, differ- 
ent instincts. 

The wickedness consists in denying the truth ; it 
consists also in asking one man to do something be- 
cause other men can do it. It relieves the great and 
strong from doing what they should do for the lesser. 
It is thoroughly unchristian. 

There are many races, and the men of each race dif- 
fer from one another. 

There are in America representatives of every race 
and hybrids of them all. 

The so-called white race consists of brunets and 

f7 



98 

blonds and gfi'ades between — the melanchroics, the 
xanthrochroics, and the grades. 

All whites have thin skins and can blush; that is, 
their blood cells fill up and make them redder upon 
the moment when there are strong emotions of cer- 
tain kinds. 

Negroes cannot blush ; nor can Indians. This does 
not mean that they do not feel shame; but that they 
do not show it uncontrollably. 

The true negroes are all black or brown. The true 
Indians are all reddish brown. 

There is a typical negro head shape. There is a 
typical white head shape. There is a typical red head 
shape for the Indians. No pure negro has a head 
shaped like the head of any white man; the same is 
true of the Indian. 

In America, there aie very few true negroes ; nearly 
all negroes have Portugese or Spanish blood, for the 
sufficient reason that the slave traders saw to it that 
every negress who came into America had a half -white 
child, white in the sense that the Moor or Portugese 
or Spaniard is white. This is all well told in the 
book on the Slave Trade by a great negro named W. E. 
Burghardt Du Bois, who has negro, French, German, 
Portuguese and Dutch blood. Only five per cent of 
city negroes are all negro; and in the rural districts 
the proportion does not rise above twenty-five per cent 
anywhere. 

To say in America that any colored man is all black 
is a very risky thing so far as the truth is concerned ; 
he probably has at least some white blood of the brunet 
stocks, if not of the blond stocks. 

The typical negro head is relatively long, often 
fully eight and a half inches long. The white man 
seldom has a head over seven and three-quarters inches 
long. The negro sometimes has a head even a half-inch 



&9 

longer, while such a head is very, very uncommon 
among white. 

The typical negro head is relatively not of large 
measure from the ear entrances over the forehead ; sel- 
dom more than thirteen inches ; most of them measure 
but twelve inches. 

The white man's head is usually fourteen inches in 
this measurement. 

The negro has a low crown; his head seldom 
measures over the crown from the ear to entrance 
over thirteen inches. 

The white man seldom goes under fourteen, and 
often rises to fifteen and a half. 

The negro has a large measurement over the back 
head at its greatest, often fourteen inches; while the 
white man seldom goes above this. 

Under the back head of the negro measures entirely 
different from the white man ; he has little or no lobes. 
His back head comes to a peak in the level of the ears. 
The white man has a square or round back head. Look 
at Warren Harding, side view. 

Here the negro comes to about nine inches, while 
the white man goes to ten. 

This peak is unmistakable. 

Theodore Roosevelt was mainly Dutch and Kelt, 
partly Huguenot French. 

The friends, so-called, of Warren Harding claim 
that he is also French, Dutch and Kelt-Scotch. Take 
their two faces, the two front views, their two side 
views, and see which is the truth. 

No one imagines that Warren Harding is a black 
or even a brown negro. He has china blue white eyes ; 
his flatterers call them gray. 

These eyes are set deep in caverns under the eye- 
brows and this by analogy is not a human compliment. 



100 

There is typical negro body pose, 
view of Warren Harding. 



Look at the side 




PRESIDENT WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 



In a social study more recently of Washington city 
negroes and colored men, it was found that only one 
in eight is self-supporting; the other seven live upon 
women, their mothers, their wives, their sisters, even 
their grandmothers and daughters. 



101 

Of these self-supporting city negroes, very few are 
self-directing, and he has never supported his wife. 

The buck nigger does not support any one else even 
when he works. 

It is when one gots into the psychic life that one 
realizes the differences between races and the indi- 
viduals within the same race. 

Take the dominant traits. 

The dominant of the red man is revenge. An- 
other powerful trait inclination to do as he pleases. 
But at home his squaw rules him, and hoes the com 
in the garden while he hunts beasts and men. Why 
does Warren Harding call his wife the Duchess 

Pride and vanity consume alike the black man and 
the red man ; each must save his face from the shame 
of the kinds he understands. Each is a consummate 
actor ; each is forever on the masquerade in public. 

To work like a nigger means only to work hard 
under the lash. All blacks and all reds hate work. A 
humble delight in work is a trait reserved to the yellow 
man rvd cl:<e white man. 

Very few white men have either pride or vanity; 
so ra'^'c are these traits in white men that one always 
notice? and remarks them when present in individuals, 
and marks them with scorn. 

The negro, especially the colored man, loves words ; 
he is musical and loves the sound of long words, espe- 
cially those with "r" and "1" in them. But he does 
not understand the meaning of words. One has but to 
read the writings and speeches of Warren Harding to 
see that he knows no grammar, has no rhetoric and 
uses words for their mellifluousness, not for their 
meanings. His message to Congress on April 11, fully 
illustrates this. For instance, the impossible use of 
derive, where he spoke, using derive intransitively, 
without any object. 



102 

1. "The remaining obstacles which are the inherit- 
ance of capitalistic exploitation must be removed and 
labor must join management in understanding that the 
public which pays * * *" 

2 «<=:: * * ^jjg public to derive and simple justice 
is the right and will continue to be the right of all the 
people." 

3. "The staggering load of war debt must be cleared 
for ordinarily funding and gradual liquidation. We 
shall hasten the solution and aid effectively in lifting 
tax burdens if we strike resolutely an expenditure." 

4. "Less of government in business as well as more 
business in government." 

5. "There is no challenge to honest and lawful busi- 
ness success, but government approval of untrammelled 
business does not mean toleration of restraint of trade 
or on maintained prices by unnatural methods." 

We submit here a few gems from the message of 
Warren Harding to Congress when it met in special 
session in April. These are all taken from a single part 
of this very important document, which one Massa- 
chusetts Congressman pronounced as the splendid ut- 
terance of our great chief, the President, Allen T. 
Treadway. 

1. What the great President meant by the first sen- 
tence is known only to himself. What are the people 
to "derive?" 

2. Since when did the grammarians permit "ordi- 
narily" to be used as an adjective modifier? 

3. What is it "to strike" resolutely an expenditure? 

4. What is this, a sentence ? 

5. The last sentence, like the first, is a meaning- 
less jumble of words. 

One can now tell an original production by Hard- 
ing; it is a collection of more or less melodious words 



103 

that have no content, no grammar, and no rhetorical 
propriety. 

The dominant trait of a white man is love of his 
own family, especially of his wife and children, but 
also of his parents and other near blood kin. 

Another very strong trait of the white man is 
prudence, far-sightedness. 

Still another is a genuine love of truth. He will 
work to find the truth, the facts, the principles, for 
the mere sake of knowing them. 

The white man loves industry itself; he enjoys 
work. 

He loves property; and keeps all that he can of 
what he makes. 

He pities the poor, the sick, the unforunate. 

One has but to think of the negro and of the In- 
dian in these terms to see how wide apart the races of 
men are. Neither knows pity. 

There is even a difference in respect to their sex 
life — all men have more or less lust. But with the 
white man it results, in nearly all cases, in a passion 
to possess one woman and to support her publicly — to 
own her through her affections. 

The white man who is typical will not marry an 
unchaste woman. He may be terribly selfish about 
this, but it is his race-instinct that makes him feel so. 

We hear veiy much about the enormous amount of 
divorce in America; but the common facts are these: 
It is possible to go into whole churches and into whole 
villages and not to discover among all the people there 
a single case of divorce or adultery. 

It is sometimes urged that everywhere there is vice 
but that in some such groups this is hidden; this is 
pure cynicism. 

While the white man is not universally chaste be- 
fore marriage, he is seldom unchaste after marriage. 



104 

Other traits might be enumerated to distinguish 
the pure races by typical individuals. 

It is sometimes said that there are no pure races. 
The anthropologists know the truth. There are in 
America entire families all of whose children will have 
within an eighth of an inch in every measurement ex- 
actly the same style of head, boys and girls alike. 

Here it should be remembered that red and black 
Kelts are twins, the hair color being a mere trick of 
old MOTHER NATURE. 

Anthropologists have taken many measurements, 
even of first cousins, to find that they are almost 
identically alike. 

Where children in the same family differ radically, 
there is evidence of hybrid origin. Here again it must 
be remembered that national poltical names are mean- 
ingless. There is not the slightest difference, 
anthropologically, between a German Saxon and Eng- 
lish Saxon; or between a German Wurttemberger and 
an English Angle, for these are the same people in dif- 
ferent habitats, slightly different, not enough to modify 
the body or the mind. 

The Keltic Pole is exactly the same as the Rhenish 
Kelt and the Irish also. 

Anthropology cuts under governments to realities. 

Now when one comes to investigate a large fam- 
ily such as the Harding kin numbering now almost or 
quite one thousand descendants of old Amos Harding, 
one discovers that he is dealing with mongrels, with 
hybrids with mestizoes. 

This is apparently a hateful thing to say; but the 
people who started it were the Republicans who set out 
to organize eveiy new woman colored voter for their 
man, on the ground that he had negro blood. Other- 
wise, it would never have reached the ears of the 
scientists. 



You cannot eat your cake and have it ; the price of 
the vast negro vote is white investigation. 

When the tissue sheets prepared by the Republicans 
first went out, and the news reached New England, 
those provincials imagined that William Chancellor, 
Professor of Political Economics, Wooster College, 
which is the exact way that some of the sheets read, 
was asserting that some Harding white man had vio- 
lated race ethics by perpetrating a white child upon 
an unfortunate negro wench. As we have said before, 
the name of the Professor of Politics who had been 
also Professor of Economics at the College, was Wil- 
liam Estabrook Chancellor, and the real Chancellor 
who got out (or in whose name these sheets were got- 
ten out) was a black negro in the Harding district. 
But to proceed to the facts. This black negro desired 
every one to know that all the Hardings were black; 
that there was no "bar sinister" about it; that this 
Warren Harding belonged to his race just as he him- 
self did, and that they were all Republicans from boy- 
hood up. 

When, contrary to his desire, William Estabrook 
Chancellor became involved in this because he would 
not lie about his belief, for he believed that these 
negroes were telling the truth, as indeed they were, he 
soon discovered that the "bar sinister" was all a part 
of the New England tradition ; that there had been in 
Ohio no white Harding^ ; that what these white-colored 
Hardings men had done was to take as mates the igiTor- 
ant white girls of their own neighborhoods, and he 
found that there had been very little bother about 
marriage with any of them. They simply mated al- 
most always for life. Morals were not involved save as 
it is immoral to mix races, and perhaps immoral not 
to have a public marrage. 

In that back country they were not supporting 



106 

ministers or justices of the peace; they were busy- 
trying to support themselves and breed children. 

Now the evidences are many that all the Hardings, 
descendants from Amos, have negro blood, as we have 
told elsewhere. But to any anthropologist — we are 
quoting here from one of the hundreds of letters that 
Professor Chancellor wrote before he left for parts un- 
known in order to escape the lawlessness of certain 
persons nominally in the pay of the Government, but 
actually the tools of plutocracy trying to defeat his 
law suits — the best evidence is in the father and ten 
children born to him. These TEN offspring of George 
Tryon Harding II, could not have born of parents of 
pure race. No one imagines that the mother was the 
cause of the exceeding variety of types in this brood ; 
ihe was at least nearly all white. She may possibly 
have had some Indian blood, but there is no direct 
evidence on this point. Any who read this must get 
over the notion that most of the country people around 
Blooming Grove were white people; mostly they were 
colored people like the Plardings. 

Of these TEN Harding children, of whom Warren 
is the oldest, not eight as Warren, through Jack War- 
wick would have you believe, nor five as the Republi- 
cans falsely said in order to conceal the black ones from 
the public gaze, some were very black, and two were 
quite light, and Warren was almost as light as these 
two. One finds in these TEN children all shades from 
dark brown to very light yellow or lemon green or saf- 
fron, for the color of the three who are most nearly 
white is hard to name. 

Color, though the popular means of discrimination, 
is by no means the most useful means to the an- 
thropologist. Mental and moral traits, physical modes 
of functioning, and race consciousness count far more 
than color. 



107 

After he grew up why did not Warren Gamaliel 
Harding resent his nickname "Nig"? For the suffi- 
cient reason, as he has told United States Senators, 
that he is proud of having negro blood. Every man 
is secretly proud of his race elements, as he ought to 
be. The white man's notion that the black man envies 
him is silly in itself. The black man despises him; so 
does the yellow man, and so does the red man. 

It is true that Warren has the eye of the white man ; 
but his sister, Mary, had the dark brown eye of the 
black race. Would any one accuse her mother of hav- 
ing had sexual relations with any other man than her 
ostensible husband? One of the children who died 
was very dark. 

Did Warren Harding keep his promise that he would 
bring together all his family and let them be seen at 
the White House, in order to satisfy the American 
people on this point ? He did not. Indeed, such a course 
might have had most serious consequences. His 
father shows plainly in his color, his manner, his walk, 
that he is partly negro. But why was not all this dis- 
covered long ago? It was. The Hardings never 
passed for white and never tried to do so until after the 
death of Amos H. Kling in the period when Warren 
was Lieutenant Governor. Not even then was there 
any sudden move. Herrick would not have stood for 
this. But as the family fortunes slowly improved, 
Warren slowly dropped his colored kin. 

At Blooming Grove, it is said, that in the past fif- 
teen years, Warren has visited there but once, and 
even then he passed through on a motor car tour, and 
did not stop or get out of the car. His own relatives 
told this to the reporters of several newspapers as well 
as the friends of Professor Chancellor. 

But Warren is not a pure negro. One finds in him 
many mixed traits with some dominant. The Ameri- 



108 

can people would like to know now at the begrinning 
of his administration what his dominant trait is, and 
what his other influential trats are. 

His dominant trait is a love of ease. He likes to 
be well provided for. To have plenty to eat, plenty to 
wear, warm housing, tobacco to smoke, chew and take 
as snuff, for he revels in tobacco and in times past 
plenty to drink, for which habit in its final stages he 
was, on several occasions, treated in the private sani- 
tarium of Dr. C. E. Sawyer, who has just been made 
an Admiral in the United States navy, where at public 
expense he will continue as Warren's private physician. 
This appointment also conveniently limits unwelcome 
scientific observation. 

Give Harding ease and he is at peace with the 
world. He cares nothing whatever how the ease is 
secured. Because he loves ease, he is the perfection 
of procrastination ; he hates to come to the time when 
he must do something. Do-nothing would be a far 
beter name for him than Harding. 

His next trait is caution, which he gets not from 
his Dutch ancestry but from his negro. He has no 
prudence, no prevision; he never bothered to learn 
geography on the notion that some day he might be 
a member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee; 
he knows nothing of international law or of ordinary 
law, in the prospect that some day he might become 
the head of our foreign affairs as president. But he 
has caution; he looks about circumspectly. He does 
nothing but waits with his eyes half open and his 
ears wide open to adjust himself to the turn of affairs. 
He is the typical man to whom things happen but who 
is ready for them when they happen. These are jungle 
traits. 

He loves to appear more than what he is. This is 
the negro again. He likes to be well thought of. He 



109 

is a born imposter, poseur, mimic, masquerador. But 
he has no taste in this show. His wife has tamed down 
his orig-inal love of loud clothes and loud colors. 

His desire to keep out of trouble is another trait. 
He can sidestep all blows. He makes no decisions that 
can possibly be avoided. This trait is in subordhiation 
to his male trait of love of ease, lie will move rather 
than take a blow. 

He hates fight ; in which respect he is no Kelt like 
Andrew Jacskon ; and no Dutchman like Theodore 
Roosevelt. These men loved fighting for its own sake ; 
Warren hates it. He is a born pacifist. 

The Phillips case illustrates his sex instincts. Mrs. 
Phillips is the wife of a dry goods man in Marion, very 
showy and vain, with a passon for men. Jim Phillips 
is a poor little fellow who is the part owner of a store 
there. 

This woman has m.ade herself useful to men of a 
kind. She got in with Warren, who as usual, paid no 
attention to his own wife who is passee through years. 

On frequent occasions, even after the nomination, 
he and Mrs. Phillips visited together at Upper San- 
dusky. It is said that Herrick, who knew about this, 
went to Jim Phillips and offered to send both him- 
self and the woman to Japan, with an income guaran- 
teed monthly so long as Warren was President. It was 
reported in every stage of the affair just what was 
paid. The stake was $25,000 down, and $2,000 a 
month. The Phillips went to Japan early in October, 
but not until Mrs. Phillips, who is a very talkative 
woman, had told all her friends just what she was to 
receive. All that Warren said even privately was that 
he could get another woman. 

Some of Warren's affairs with the ladies were al- 
most disastrous, as, for instance, in the case where the 
police of the city of Washington were called to the 



110 

house of his regular lady friend to sober him up and 
stitch the cuts in his back which resulted, according to 
her, from a dispute over finances. Those interested 
may find and read it in the police records of 1918. This 
woman, who is about thirty-five years old, was never 
even rebuked for this almost fatal attack upon a mem- 
ber of the greatest deliberative body of the world. 

This matter was given to the Democratic National 
Committee by the Department of Justice and the Wash- 
ington police; but the Democrats were too decent to 
use it, despite the intense provocation from the 
abominable stories told of Woodrow Wilson in order 
to counteract the truth of this incident, which was 
official. 

In sex morals Warren advocates no reservations. 
His marriage itself is evidence of this, for he married 
a woman whom we saw in the earlier part of this book 
had lived with a man and born him a child without any 
marriage. It should be remembered that the marriage 
was due to no delusions on either side. Only in the 
sequel did it appear which had won the higher prize. 

The passion to use plenty of words that sound well, 
and the total inability to use them correctly is another 
trait of Warren's. It is on record that he makes sen- 
tences several hundred words long without any sub- 
jects. 

What are these psychical traits? Negro,, Portu- 
guese, Dutch! 

He has no thrift ; he has no sense of property ; he 
has never managed business affairs. He does not keep 
his own business accounts. His wife manages for him. 
As in many other negro families, the woman is the 
main works. 

Are there any evidences of Indian blood of which 
he has admitted publicly ? 



in 

A certain reticence and strutting pride in his big 
body. 

We have discussed the latter trait elsewhere. 

His reticence is what has misled some people to 
thinking that he has no negro blood; but here the In- 
dian has mastered the black man. 

It has been urged that Warren Harding cannot be 
a negro because he is "no fool." Who says that the full 
grown negro is a fool ? Certainly not those who know 
the negro. 

Not one fool in a million lives to be fifty-six years 
old and to weigh two hundred pounds and to live as 
master in a house that cost hundreds of thousands of 
dollars. Of course, Warren Harding is not only no 
fool, but he is one of the cleverest men in America. 
He has put it over on 110,000,000 people. 

As John D. Rockefeller is the biggest man in prop- 
erty in the United States, so Warren is for four years 
the biggest in government. 

As to instincts he is "deep," with the depth of the 
Indian, full of subterfuges and of ambush and of coun- 
ter-marching. He lay in ambush and trapped the 
American people. 

One day he called two small children in from the 
street in Marion and had himself photographed with 
them as Grandpa Harding and his two gi'andchildren ; 
the parents were furious, but the newspapers ran the 
pictures in a thousand cities. He is a clever man. 

But neither he nor Mrs. Harding love children. 
They lost her child by de Wolf. They have never 
adopted any other children, not even black ones. 

Warren loves games of chance with all the passion 
of the negro ; but he plays a good game of poker. This 
is Dutch. 

In a certain stage of dissolution, the black pig- 
mentation of the octeroon, hexdecaroon, which about 



112 

measures this man, the pigment breaks into blotches; 
these blotches can easily be observed on Warren's neck. 

It is another trait of the thinly colored man to take 
on heavy tan ; v^hen he came home from the Carribean, 
all the newspapers, even the Republican ones, reported 
that Harding has a very heavy coat of tropic tan; he 
was swart and almost black. The same statements 
were repeated when he came back from Florida. But 
generally Warren resort^ as do his sisters, to cos- 
metics in order to make himself look more white than 
he really is. 

When he was in Nashville, he had been so thor- 
oughly bleached by his barber and so entirely covered 
with talcum powder and rouge as to appear like a man 
in a mask. His brunet wife has enameled when she 
travels in order to appear a very white woman. 

His sisters always wear veils in public. They carry 
parasols even on cloudy days. 

Of all his family of TEN brothers and sisters, only 
three have married. One is almost white, the brother 
in Columbus, who is said to have two children ; a second 
is Mrs. Remsberg, who lives in California, and who 
married a German, is said to have three children. He 
is the third to marry. Two died as children. The 
other five never married. Why not? 

There is a club of colored millionaires in Chicago 
to which only millionaire negroes whose wives are 
white women can be admitted. Does his second cousin, 
C. E. Harding, belong to this club ? 

This is the Harding who is now having the family 
genealogy revised at any cost in order to cut out all 
the evidence that he and the other descendants of old 
Amos Harding are all negroes in part. 

This is the Harding who recently loaned a twelve- 
year-old daughter to the President to live in the White 
House for a while and fool the American people. She 



113 

appears to be a nice child, with curls. It is said that 
this Harding is very close to Mrs. Georgia Harding 
Hamon, who supplied a million dollars to the campaign 
for the nomination. 

Until he found how angry the American people 
were at being fooled with regard to himself, Warren 
Harding used to boast that he was a man of the future 
and that in the course of time all Americans would 
be mestizos like himself and the rest of the Hardings. 
But where do the Puritans and Cavaliers come in from 
Massachusetts and Virginia? Is Old England to have 
no representation in the future American? Some of 
us who have English blood will take a look into this 
matter whether the Afro-American of no English 
blood permits it or not. 

Take the Cabinet. Hughes is a brunet Welshman, 
insensitive to the color of the President. 

Mellon is an Irishman. He hates the British. 

Daugherty is an Irishman. 

Davis is a Welshman. 

Hoover is a German by ancestry. 

Wallace is Scotch. So is Denby. 

Fall, Hayes and Weeks appear to be Scotch-Irish. 

Where is the Englishman? 

Of course, it is easy to answer that they are "all 
Americans". Why then the appeal to the German vote, 
the Irish vote ? To every race under the canopy except 
the English? 

It was said in the campaign that Harding would 
appoint negroes to high office. He virtually promised 
this in the Oklahoma speech, and there are many 
negroes angered because so far he has not seemed to 
do so. But take the D. R. Crissinger matter. 

Crissinger was born in Blooming Grove, and has 
always been a friend of Warren's and a Democrat. 
When Warren was nominated, he organized the negroes. 



114 

of that section for Warren. He arranged the William 
Chancellor propaganda. He is now the Controller of 
Currency under Plarding. Is he a white man ? Few in 
Blooming Grove are white all through. He does not 
look like an all-white man. Blood is thicker than water ; 
is race thicker than politics ? 

The law of Ohio says that the charge that a man 
has negro blood is no slander. The jury in the now 
famous David Butler-Amos Smith case, elsewhere told, 
said it was no slander for Smith to call the wife of 
Butler, a Harding, a nigger. The Constitution of the 
United States makes no discrimination between races. 
Why then does Warren now care? He does not care. 
The whole movement to suppress the truth about 
Warren is the work of the people who do not believe 
in the justice and the wisdom of the pronouncement 
of Harding in Oklahoma and elsewhere that no dis- 
crimination should ever be made ; and Warren thereby 
gets everything coming and going. He professes race 
equality and practiced it in his own marriage; but he 
takes the help of those who hate the notion. 

There will be a showdown; the state of public 
opinion in the Union demands it. 

So long as instincts are registered in grey matter 
called nerve tissue, and so long as the distribution and 
the amount of grey matter in a brain do make a great 
difference in conduct, the American people will decline 
generally to endorse the notion that the negro is as 
good as the white man; and will resist all contamina- 
tion of a people by inferior blood. 

How is to be explained then in the light of Ohio 
politics that the people have taken no interest in the 
fact that Warren Harding has negro blood ? 

Many other negroes have served in the Ohio State 
Legislature. There were two in those of Harding's 
time who admitted this in their legislative directory 



115 

lives, and there were others who simply said nothing 
about the matter. 

Ohio is full of sentimentalists who believe in giving 
the colored brother a chance — that is, a chance to rule 
the whites. A very distinguished preacher told Pro- 
fessor Chancellor, as he has reported to us in a letter 
in the period before he went away, that if the white 
women of the South will not receive colored men, so 
much the worse for the white women. 

Men of this kind are sentimentalists. It so happens 
that this preacher never admits any negroes into his 
church, however. He is himself but one generation 
from the Old Country, which shows an important phase 
of the matter. 

To most foreigners, coming into the United States, 
the Afro-American is a native, and because he knows 
the ropes, the foreigner often finds the colored man 
very helpful. The colored man plays up to him. Being 
socially inferior, he delights in the implicit faith that 
the "Dago" or the "Hunky" has in him. To the ignor- 
ant foreigner the color is meaningless. This is espe- 
cially true of the brunet foreigner in dealing with the 
colored American, who may be lighter in shade than 
himself. 

This does not mean that the dark brunet Welshman 
or Dutchman or Jew or Spaniard is lower than the 
colored man ; far from it. What it means is that the 
foreigner has not learned to look at the brain case of 
the man, at his walk, or to consider the intelligence 
with which he speaks. More than this, often the 
brunet white man from Europe has married a colored 
woman thinking her to be white, from which more than 
one tragedy has followed under the Mendalian law. 
When the colored man or woman complain of social 
discrimination, the foreigner sympathizes, for to him 
all social discrimination is unjust. That there ought 



116 

to be race discrimination is beyond his understanding. 
Another factor has helped to make a mess of the deal- 
ings with the negroes by foreigners. There have been 
four sources of race contamination from negroes in 
the history of Europe: 

First, from the very earliest ages, there were emi- 
grants out of Africa, mostly slaves by capture in war, 
but not all. Homer in his first poem speaks of the 
"blameless Ethiopians," meaning that these blacks 
were so dull and ignorant that they could not be blamed 
for what they did. That was three thousand years ago. 
There were tens of thousands of Ethiopian slaves in 
Egypt when the children of Isreal were there. These 
slaves and others were constantly allowed to live every- 
where among the whites; and though many of them 
were eunichs, still some of them were able to produce 
offspring of their own pure negro blood or mixed with 
those of other slaves and occasionally with the native 
free persons. This contamination greatly increased 
among the Romans. And it persists to this very day 
when rich and powerful men bring up from African 
and Asian travels these blacks and after employing 
them for a time, let them go. One of the great Medici 
married a negress and the race showed the signs of it 
to its very end. Alexander Dumas had negro blood; 
so had Robert Browning, which is one reason why 
the father of Elizabeth Barrett objected to that mar- 
riage. Perhaps this is one reason also why Robert 
Browning is so obscure and uses words so strangely; 
there is a Browning cult that professes to get mean- 
ings in Browning that no one else of common sense can 
find ; there is also growing up a Harding cult likewise. 

There was one mighty delivery of negroes into 
Europe when Hannibal marched the Carthegiiian 
troops over the Alps from Spain through F^^'V .'. into 
Italy and kept them a year at Cannae ; he had negro sol- 



117 

diers and negro slaves with him ; and the marks of that 
migration are seen in Italy to this day in the appear- 
ance of the people, for these Cartheginians never went 
home again. They were defeated in battle and hid 
themselves in the mountains and swamps to reappear 
again as peasants and slaves. He had an army of 
more than a hundred thousand with many women camp 
followers. In a world that had only a few millions 
then, this was a proportionately very large number. 

The same thing occurred when the Spaniards sent 
the Armada against the British. Their quarter of a 
millicr. ' .'J'oi s and soldiers were shipwrecked upon the 
coasts of several countries, Holland, Scotland, Ireland; 
and these people in many instances were negroes. 

Worse than these cases was the keeping of hundreds 
of thousands of soldiers in the Netherlands by Spain 
in the period that culminated with the terrible Duke of 
Alva. There are marks to this day in some parts of 
the lowlands and the Rhinelands that show what negro 
contamination may do. Now the only reason why the 
contamination has not gone farther is because of race 
instinct where these negroes went. Mostly they were 
men. Mostly when they were caught they were 
castrated; but in some instances they were allowed to 
marry and to breed. Some of the immigrants from 
Europe show the positive signs of negro blood; this 
especially is true of Sicilians and of South Italians and 
of the Rhineland peoples. 

All such brunets, all who feel in their bones that 
their color and their peculiarities are due to negro blood 
have been eager to give the Afro-American a place 
at the very side of the true white man in America. 
They have done this in Ohio. In the last campaign 
many a man and woman who passed for white and 
whose origin is wholly European for hundreds of years 



118 

out of race sympathy voted for Warren Harding. And 
he knew this as has been shown elsewhere. 

But perfectly pure races did the same thing. Why 
should not the Germans in America who still love Ger- 
many more than the United States not support the race 
contamination that this inter-marriage means? Why 
should they not seek the desruction of the Americans 
who are descended from the British Isles and Danish 
and Scandinavian and French stocks? Very few blond 
or tawny Germans themselves ever many negroes or 
colored people. Why, in the competition of races should 
they hesitate to back Harding and break the power of 
their rivals? They believe in the long run America 
is to be Germanized. Of course, to the Germans who 
love our country, who are millions in number, the very 
idea of race contamination as a means of destroying 
British stocks is abhorrent. They also are loyal Ameri- 
cans to the core. 

Many Jews have supported every negro that has 
run for office on the theory that it will forward the 
day when Jerusalem rules the world to have America 
made rotten. Good Jews realize their best hope is in 
pure American institutions. 

Many very poor people of all races have supported 
the negro candidates, including Harding, because they 
hate the successful white rich. 

Now in many states the contest is without interest ; 
they have few negroes to consider. Their climates or 
their industries are such as not to give the negro any 
real foothold. But in other states there is a profound 
interest in the struggle. Ohio in the North is not favor- 
able climatically for the negro; but all the state is 
favorable industrially to him. 

In some states the negro, though numerous, is made 
into a caste and reduced to social degradation ; in such 
state he is overpowered. 



119 

A state where he does not count because he is rare 
is Massachusetts ; a state where he is in virtual slavery 
yet is South Carolina. A state where the question 
what to do about him is vital is Ohio. 

The time had to come when Ohio and the Nation 
should face the issue and it arrived last November. 
We now have the issue with a negro as President in the 
White House and with messages coming from that 
White House that are meaningless in their content but 
ominous in their force for the future. Where there 
should be light and leading, there is nothing but con- 
fusion. 

A gross insult has been heaped upon the white peo- 
ple of the South by placing this man there, but the 
sycophant) sh women of the Northwest seem to be do- 
ing what they can to ameliorate the social taboo upon 
the present residents there. 

A recent picture of a visiting delegation shows 
something of the situation; the President is looking 
one way and the white woman another; it is the 
characteristic of the President never to look one in the 
eye. This is not a black man's trait, however, it is the 
trait of the thief, of the man who has looted something, 
as has looted the Presidency by lying about his an- 
cestors. 

To the negro, the uncured primitive, lying is not 
a vice but a virtue; and successful lying indicates far 
more ability and therefore more merit than successful 
truth-telling, which requires only memory and not 
judgment or shrewdness. How is this to be reconciled 
with the all-known Harding habit of reading his 
speeches, both those written for him and the few pre- 
pared by himself, which may easily be separated from 
the others by their superiority in singular inventions of 
words, grammar and rhetoric. Only Warren ever in- 
vented "involvement" and "normalcy." The explana- 



120 

tion is that in him the primitive negro is removed 
three generations back in one line and somewhat 
farther in another line. 

Unlike his great predecessor, McKinley, Harding is 
afraid to trust himself to extemporaneous speech, be- 
cause he loses his subjects and predicates, and contra- 
dicts himself within a few lines. 



CHAPTER X 
WHAT IS THE CABINET? 

Reviewing the political scene after some weeks of 
the new administration, one finds that in order to un- 
derstand it one must look carefully into the composi- 
tion of the Cabinet, into the history of Ohio politics, 
and into the history of the Presidency itself. What 
has been taking place is the logical outcome of the 
past. The people are not now informed as to the 
inside moves nor have they been assisted in their 
natural desire to get under the surface of things into 
the realities of what really is theirs and of what they 
are paying for, with their own money. It is not a Re- 
publican notion that the Government belongs to the 
people. 

It is commonly supposed that the causes for the 
appointment of Cabinet officers lie somewhere in some 
conception of the public welfare. It will, therefore, be 
profitable to look into these Cabinet positions for the 
truth. Three of these positions usually attract con- 
siderable attention — the Treasury, the State and the 
Attorney Generalship. In the case of the present 
Cabinet, they deserve much more rigid scrutiny than 
they have as yet received. 

The oldest in seniority, as we discover upon turn- 
ing the authoritative and learned pages of the college 
professors and publicists who have written upon the 
subject, are State, Treasury and War. State deals 
with foreign affairs and keeps all the archives of the 
Nation, so far as these are stored with the treasures 
of our history, including the originals of all treaties 

121) 



122 • ■ 

and laws. It is relatively unimportant in financial 
charges, even now spending of this wild currency, un- 
harnessed from gold, which is the only money, but 
eight or nine millions of dollars a year. But the Secre- 
tary of State does manage the Nation as a whole un- 
der the President, of course, in respect to war and 
peace ; and in case of the demise of both President and 
Vice-President, would succeed to the Presidency itself. 
To the world outside of America, he is our greatest 
man, none other officer excepted. In almost every 
other government among civilized nations, this office 
would be accounted as the Prime Ministry itself. In 
social prestige, the State Department leads because 
the Secretary meets all the foreign ambassadors and 
ministers, including those from lands with kings, nobil- 
ity and aristocracy, at social functions delightful to 
rich Americans and tufthunters upon equal terms. The 
women make the Department of State the first in 
sanding; few women are really democratic. 

According to the newspapers, with their carefully 
schooled reports, the reasons that forced the appoint- 
ment of Charles Evans Hughes were as follows, viz. : 

1. The administration needed for its chief secretary 
a man in whom the people had confidence, though just 
what "people" was not specified. On this basis, only 
two names were considered by the Cabinet makers — 
those of Hughes and of Elihu Root. There were many 
objections to Mr. Root; he had been in several Cabinets 
before and was far past three score years and ten. 
He had very much a mind of his own ; and at heart 
was FOR the League of Nations. 

2. He was very rich and had great wealth in to- 
bacco enterprises, especially cigarettes; and the com- 
mon people regarded him as essentially an agent of 
corporate property. 

3. Mr. Hughes had been a very successful law 



123 

teacher, a very successful investigator of public 
scandals, a fairly successful governor, a highly credit- 
able member of the United States Supreme Court; al- 
most the winner of the Presidency when candidate upon 
the Republican ticket in 1916 ; and in the very recent 
years a very successful lawyer with inclinations to- 
ward honesty and toward fair treatment of labor and 
of those who claimed the right of free speech. 

In truth, the moral position of Mr. Hughes is that 
of a lawyer trained in the principles of Blackstone 
and of the old individual freedom. He is a good man 
with a mind furnished with the notions of a hundred 
years ago. That he charged the miners of Indiana, 
according to report, $150,000 but goes to show his 
moral position. He sold himself to them at a fair price, 
as great lawyers do, and he gave them value. He is 
not a philanthropist ; nor as a lawyer does he play the 
part of Robin Hood, getting big fees from the rich and 
turning about and helping the poor freely. He is the 
very opposite of Robert G. Ingersoll, and, doubtless, 
congratulates himself thereon. 

Personally, Secretary Hughes is reticent, modest, 
polite, intellectual, aloof, judicious, fair-minded, dili- 
gent, even-tempored, refined. In tastes he is domestic, 
and he loves music, playing a small organ and sing- 
ing with his family in hours of leisure. 

But to imagine that these were the moving con- 
siderations for his choice as the first man under the 
new chief is to give evidence that one is really "out of 
politics," for one then would disclose that one had no 
politics inside himself. 

The new President is a Baptist, the first of his de- 
nomination to become the head of Government. Not 
only is Charles Evans Hughes a Baptist, but he is also 
the foremost Baptist layman in America, not excepting 
even the Rockefellers themselves, for he has been the 



124 

Moderator of the Baptist national meetings and in 
other offices and services has made himself their main 
layman. What he says goes in a denomination of 
many millions. 

2. OIL is the key to this political phase; always 
in American politics, the speculative business man, 
by getting behind a candidate, puts him across. Oil 
went behind the Republican candidate, as the protective 
tariff men and the bankers got behind even Abraham 
Lincoln in 1860 and 1864. There is nothing wicked 
in this in itself; the speculative business man has the 
right to vote for his own pocket. But oil is Rocke- 
feller. The Rockefeller interests desired righteous oil 
to win rather than unrighteousness tobacco as leader 
before the world. There is oil to be had elsewhere 
than in the United States, and the State Department 
should have the right views on oil. 

3. It so happens that the Pulitizer Estate owns two 
great Democratic newspapers, the New York World 
and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and these two papers 
and others all led with them were the only ones that 
were fair to Professor William Estabrook Chancellor in 
the effort that he had made to get all the peculiar 
facts of the Harding ancestry studied by the American 
people. Moreover, the World had some special in- 
vestigators out even after the election to look into 
all the facts. THE WORLD is an organ of public 
opinion that volues the truth. It also so happens that 
Charles Evans Hughes has very close connections with 
the Pulitzer Estate due to the will of Joseph Pulitzer 
himself, and unless common reports err, he has been 
drawing the not inconsiderable salary of $36,000 a year 
as the paid trustee and legal counsel of that estate ever 
since the death of Mr. Pulizer. Reports on this point 
may be in error, but the fact that the Pulitzer heirs 
are tied up to Mr. Hughes is well known. The appoint- 



125 

men of Mr. Hughes would not in itself control the edi- 
torial opinion of those great newspapers, but since his 
appointment, the entire public that knows anyhing 
about newspapers knows that the edge of hostility to 
Mr. Hughes and to the Administration is off. The edi- 
torial and the reportorial staffs of newspapers owned 
by rich nien are not wholely free, and no man of sense 
supposes that they can be free. Moreover, the search 
into the records of the Harding ancestry by that paper 
ceased after the announcement of the appointment of 
Mr. Hughes. To capture the two best organs of the 
Democratic party by one appointment was a very 
shrewd move. They remain nominally Democratic, of 
course. What in the way of awkward situations for 
Mr. Hughes may yet develop remains to be seen. He 
is not the owner of the properties; and the heirs are 
not at heart Republicans. 

4. A fourth real cause for the appointment of Mr. 
Hughes was to weight the Cabinet against other per- 
sons who were to be in it; to draw the herring across 
the trail ; to put up a smoke screen. 

Nevertheless, Mr. Hughes is a sizable man, a credit 
to the Republicans, at least 75 or 80 per cent of what 
the Secretary of State should be; he is not a Webster 
or a John Hay; but he is on the whole satisfactory. 
Though neither energetic nor affable, neither scholarly 
nor profound, yet he merits classification as at least a 
Cabinet star of the second magnitude; the entire visi- 
bles being stars of six magnitudes. Some think that 
big men are again grooming Hughes for the Presidency 

Consider the case of Secretary Mellon of the Treas- 
ury ; he was forced upon the President by Senator Boies 
Penrose, of Pennsylvania. Mr. Mellon is the richest 
man who ever drew a salary from the United States 
Government, richer than any Senator has ever been, 
even Senator Clark, of Montana, the copper king. No 



126 

one knows what he is worth, nor could even himself 
find out. He is too rich to make it worth while to esti- 
mate his wealth unless one is looking for his income 
tax returns. Like every active plutocrat in business, 
Mr. Mellon is richer some years than others. He was 
born rich, for his father made a great fortune. He has 
increased this fortune many times. He may be worth 
$200,000,000. 

The Mellon National Bank of Pittsburgh is one of 
the greatest of all the Standard Oil Banks of America. 
OIL spoke and Mellon went in. Almost three score 
and ten years of age, Mr. Mellon is a very great master 
of American business. He is a steel king himself. 

Tn his defenses, to justify his appointment, it was 
said that no money will be wasted by the National 
Government while "Andy" Mellon is Treasury chief; 
but this statement assumes that the head of the Treas- 
ury controls the money affairs of the Nation, which is 
absurd. Of course, the influence of any plutocrat of 
his type would be for economy ; but it will be influence 
only. A Government that spends four billions of dol- 
lars a year cannot be much influenced by any one 
officer of the executive branch. 

What Mr. Mellon will do is to preserve the present 
money system by which banks get twice as much paper 
as they hold gold in reserve while it is illegal for any 
private citizen to have gold. This means that where 
a bank has five millions in gold, it may lend out ten 
millions of paper instead and of getting interest on fiv« 
millions, which would be (say) $300,000 a year, get- 
ting (say) $600,000, which is very nice for the stock- 
holder of big banks authorized to issue the wild cur- 
rency known as FEDERAL RESERVE notes. 

Personally, Mr. Mellon is a philanthropist; giving 
away vast sums of money every year. He has been, 
of course, a lifelong friend of both J. Pierpont Morgans 



127 

of New York and London. He is almost as rich as 
either of them was or is. He is morally a very good 
man according to the individualist scheme of things. 
He is shy, reticent, quiet, self-effacing, diligent, 
gloomy, patient, wise, far-sighted, far, very far, beyond 
most men. That he plays a gentleman's game of 
poker, he does not "bet a million" after the fashion 
of the late John W. Gates, was no objection to him on 
the part of the best poker player of Marion, and should 
not be any objection to him from anyone else. It is his 
only sport. 

Yet, because he has had no public experience in 
office and is by no means a statesman, he must be 
ranked as a star of the second magnitude. He is no 
Alexander Hamilton or Albert Gallatin or William G. 
McAdoo. 

The third appointment of importance was that of 
Harry M. Daugherty to be Attorney General. This is 
the most criticized and the most censured of all the 
appointments. It is purely personal. Elsewhere we 
have recounted the story of Ohio politics, which in- 
cludes the story of Mr. Daugherty. Here it is enough 
to say that he is a business-getting lawyer. He knows 
how to go out and get suits and clients while his part- 
ners furnish the law service. During the World War, 
he and others built an envelope factory and got a con- 
tract to make envelopes for the Post Office Depart- 
ment. This contract with the factory he sold to Day- 
ton envelope makers for just twice what the facory 
cost him, giving him a profit of $300,000. How much 
of that he could keep for himself is unkwnown. No one 
ever accused him of being a book-learned lawyer. He 
has been a very shrewd party politician all these years. 
He made Senator and President Harding. He has long 
been his political Mentor; and in that he has made 



128 

good. He is an Irishman, of course, like Mr. Mellon, 
and he is vindictive against his political opponents. 

He is the "star of bale" in this Cabinet, and he may 
prove the ruin of the man whom he has used so skil- 
fully. He remembers both his friends and his enemies, 
which is bad for a man who has so much power as 
the Attorney General necessarily possesses. He is 
"the wettest of the wets." If he develops a sense 
of scrupulous honesty, it will be a miracle of regenera- 
tion. The best that can be made of the matter is to sayi 
that the American people had full warning before the 
election in the columns of various papers. 

There is a notion that a President has the right to 
pay his political debts by putting his lifelong friends 
into high places. It is a thoroughly wicked notion. 

Believing what he does and cherishing his natural 
instincts to reward and to punish by using the Gov- 
ernment itself to advance his own cause, Mr. Daugh- 
erty is a danger to the freedom of many individual 
Americans. With him, America becomes a land not of 
laws but of men. With a few more Irishmen like him 
— which many Irishmen are not — this country would 
become another Ireland, and the peace of our homes 
would be turned into chaos and fued. 
He also is a poker player. 

As the foundation for the Cabinet, we have, then, 
two stars of the second magnitude, and one star of bale. 
The other members of the Cabinet are: 

John W. Weeks War 

Edwin Denby Navy 

Hency C. Wallace Agriculture 

Albert B. Fall Interior 

James J. Davis Labor 

Will H. Hays Postoffice 

Herbert C. Hoover Commerce 

Secretary Weeks is a millionaire banker. He was 



129 

put in because he represents Massachusetts and there- 
fore Multi-millionaire Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the 
personal enemy of Woodrow Wilson ; and because he is 
very rich ; and in sympathy with the Federal Reserve 
bloating of the currency. He s a star of the sixth 
magnitude. Of course, he has executive ability, and 
equally, of course, he is no statesman at all. 

Edwin Denby is of higher material. He is a thor- 
oughly trained man of affairs, a millionaire, very re- 
actonary but very much of a patriot all the same. He 
had the personal courage to go into the fighting zone in 
the naval service, begining as a marine, though well 
past forty years old then. He ranks as a star of the 
third or fourth magnitude. He was put in partly to 
catch the Loyal Legion men; but mainly because he 
belongs to the Truman H. Newberry wing of the Re- 
publican party in Michigan. Newberry is the multi- 
millionaire who defeated Henry Ford by spending a 
million dollars for the election. Was adjudged guilty 
in court, but who is too rich to be punished or even 
put out of the Senate. Denby's father was Minister 
to China, and he is himself well informed regarding 
the Far East. 

Secretary Wallace is a man of personal charm, a 
millionaire, a forward looking man, an agricultural 
statesman, tinctured by some false notions of 
economics, such as price-fixing, but not withstanding 
this, very much of an asset to the Administration, a 
growing man. He is a star of the second magnitude 
or third. Unfortunately, he will not bear much weight 
against other elements in the Cabinet. 

Next to Daugherty among the objectionables is Al- 
bert B. Fall, whose relation to the supporting situation 
has been recounted in the chapter upon the Hamon 
case. Fall is in OIL. No one knows how rich he is; 
by some he is styled a millionaire, which is doubtful. 



He has been a war-with-Mexico jingo for many a year. 
Temperamentally, he is unsound. He has no guiding 
and controlling principles of action ; but is the natural 
agent for the forces in whatever environment he may 
have about him. He thinks that Mexico vi'ill never be 
safe for American plutocrats until an American army 
has taught the Mexicans respect for American rights. 
He is, therefore, a natural imperialist. There is Oil as 
well as COPPER and SILVER in Mexico. He is a sec- 
ond star of bale. 

If we have a war with Mexico, we may charge it to 
Secretary Fall and the Multissimomillionaire William 
Randolph Hearst. Fall is in the Cabinet to prepare the 
war for the lords of metals and petroleum. 

Will H. Hayes is a nice lad who organized the nation 
for the Republicans by spreading agents provocateurs 
to lie about all the Democrats, especially about Wood- 
row Wilson and James M. Cox. He is suave, neat, a 
Presbyterian elder, a very handy clerk to the great. 
He has no intelligence, no sense of the public welfare, 
no ethics beyond small personal matters such as not 
swearing or playing poker. He has been put in to 
change as many postmasters as possible from Demo- 
crats to Republicans. 

As the monkey who was put forward to do the dirty 
work of the Republicans, Hayes was apt. But he is not 
dangerous to the public welfare because he is not in- 
telligent and willful enough to do anything alone. 
When he talks of ''the NigKts of Labor" in the P. O. 
Department, he is fooling only himself. 

He is a very small star of bale. 

One wonders how some men ever arrive ; among 
such is the case of Secretary Davis, once a miner with 
a union card, now a millionaire and the national or- 
ganizer of a great secret order. He is nobody. He can 
do nothing for the department ; he has no views on pub- 



131 

lie matters ; he fills in nicely. In such a Cabinet a real 
labor man would be as unhappy as a colored gentleman 
alone on an iceberg in the Arctics. 

Last is Herbert C. Hoover, who might have been 
President, and who is playing now for the Presidency. 

There were two reasons for naming Mr. Hoover, 
real reasons. He owns THE WASHINGTON HERALD, 
a small morning daily in the National Capital ; that is, 
he owns the realty. The Noyes family owns the fran- 
chise of all four Washington papers ; and the family is 
Republican, voting in Maryland, for the people of the 
District of Columbia have no votes. 

This gives the Administration directly a Washing- 
ton organ. Of course, Hughes is very close to two 
papers as we have seen, and Mellon is very close to the 
great Pittsburg GAZETTE-TIMES, which is owned by 
close business associates. Some other men have news- 
paper interests; but Secretary Hoover actually does 
own the HERALD. 

The other reason is that public opinion requires a 
strong disinfectant in the Cabinet. Mr. Hoover has 
some false notions, such as the desirability of "export- 
ing capital" from America to help the rest of the world, 
which, of course, only means that the labor of the poor 
in our land shall be exploited to help our plutocrats 
conquer the earth. 

But even the sun has spots; and Mr. Hoover has 
shown in many fields superb executive abilities, a 
warm heart for all men, a tremendous talent for get- 
ting people together and, in short, genius. He is a 
star of the first magnitude — on next to the poorest 
ARC of the Cabinet horizon ; but he was too decent to 
decline. He should have been either Secretary of State 
or of the Interior or of the Treasury. He turned to 
Harding, and if he had not turned to him, who knows 
what the result might not have been? 



132 

But individualities are not in themselves much; 
the real question is what groups and cliques will form 
in the Cabinet, which is already apparent. 

Group 1 — Hughes, Wallace, Hoover. 

Croup 2 — Daugherty, Hays, Fall. 

Group 3 — Denby, Weeks, Mellon, Davis. 

Mellon will, therefore, hold the balance of power, 
because of the size of his group and of his own prestige 
with it. 

From their past records as the world viewed them 
these men ranked before they went into the Cabinet 
like this: 

1. Hoover 

2. Hughes — High 

3. Mellon 

4. Wallace 

5. Denby _p^.^ 

6. Weeks 

7. Davis 

8. Hays 

9. Fall 
10. Daugherty 

But like all men, they had their records to make 
when they got together and into their new lines. 

When men do get together, strange things result 
from the social relationships that come to pass from 
personal likes and dislikes. 

A srong illustration of this was the bitter political 
enmities of Cannon and Clark; but they happened to 
like one another and personally were on very friendly 
terms, when they could forget politics. Publicly, they 
said terrible things about one another; but privately 
they often hobnobbed together. This does not nean 
that they framed up deals against the world t help 
one another politically. Far from it. Thev ..nder- 



— All below par as undesir- 
ables, pernicious. 



18S 

stood that they were enemies, and yet they had friendly 
feelings through it all. 

It is impossible that men like Hoover and Daugherty 
ever could agree on much of anything political; they 
are as far apart as the Equator and North Pole. But 
even so, it is within the limits of possibility that they 
may become personal friends, though very unlikely. 

What is impossible is that Hughes will ever be the 
warm personal friend of anyone in the Cabinet. He 
will not be the center of a Cabinet family. Mellon also 
is a PBrson aioof from all others in that group. Nor 
can President Harding hmself become the center, for 
no President can forget that these secretaries are 
clerk.< only. They are irresponsible to the public. 
Whatever they do, he must stand for, or fire them. 

Weeks also belongs to this aloof and superior type 
of person, who is never a bond of union. Wallace is 
not a man of strong will power. If the Cabinet ever 
does come together, it will be through Hoover, or pos- 
sibly Denby. Hays is laughed at quietly behind the 
scenes. Davis is nobody at all. Daugherty is the low- 
est of them all in character, and they all know it. Fall 
is not much better. 

The question, therefore, is — How will the Cabinet 
function ? 

As a three-group affair, it must fail. 

The question becomes that which is already sug- 
gested — which way will Mellon turn those who 
naturally are with him? Will he join the Hoover 
group, or the Daugherty group? 

For Mellon to go with Hoover means that 
Daugherty will have to get out, as some years ago 
Ballinger had to quit the Taft Cabinet as an impos- 
sible. Ballinger, of Washington, had too noisome a 
past; Belknap in the days of Grant was a very heavy 



ir,4 

load. A century ago, George Washington had to drop 
a man for the same reason. 

Even so, Harding will have paid his political debt 
to Daugherty. 

But if Mellon decides to be practical, then he will 
go with Daugherty ; and Hughes will face the question 
whether or not a man is known by the company he 
keeps. Hughes is the titular head. With a majority 
against him, he would be out of face. 

Weeks will incline to go with Daugherty; but 
Denby may hesitate. Either, however, will follow Mel- 
lon, the plutocrat. 

The vast power of private wealth will steadily force 
Mellon to the front, and it may be that friction will 
result. 

In respect to their private fortunes, the general 
opinion is that Hoover is second in wealth ; but 
whether he is worth five millions or fifteen, no one 
knows. 

Next comes Weeks, with several millions. 

Denby is probably fourth in respect to private 
estate. 

Davis, Hughes and Wallace are commonly supposed 
to be in the millionaire class. 

No Chairman of a Republican National Committee 
needs to remain poor. But what Hays has now is un- 
known to the public. Daugherty is supposed to be 
worth less than a hundred thousand dollars in the pres- 
ent Cabinet; he is unknown to the public. Possibly, 
Hays is in this class. 

The total wealth of the Cabinet is, of course, by 
far the greatest, many times as great as any other. 
Even leaving out Mellon, one learns that the Cabinet is 
a bunch of very rich men. Most Cabinets are made 
up of poor men. This is the Cabinet of millionaires. 
Certainly five are millionaires, and two are multi- 



136 

millionaires. How rich will they be if they serve four 
years ? 

It is unpleasant to think of a man like Daugherty in 
a position to exercise selfish use of power. The Ai- 
torney General can set loose tremendous forces. Noth- 
ing in the record of this man inspires confidence that 
he will not play the game to help the rich and to help 
himself. But which of the rich will he favor? To 
be rich is to be a contestant with many other rich men 
to gain more wealth or at least to hold one's own. 

Suppose that a poor man, suppose that a poor col- 
lege professor exposes or gets in the way of a man 
like Daugherty? What will happen to him? To his 
mail ? To his personal freedom ? Suppose that a news- 
paper should undertake to oppose this bunch? Would 
Hughes be of any avail to them ? Hughes is set aside 
for international affairs. Daugherty and Hays and 
Fall will manage the domestic matters, the sources 
of supply, the enemies of the plutocracy. 

Hughes is no Andrew Jackson to accumulate wrath 
unto a day of wrath and outbreak. What is Hoover, 
next to the tail-ender in the Cabinet. And he is too 
rich to see the world and human life just as the poor 
man seeking to be free sees it. 

The great game of liquidating wages goes on: this 
means the reduction of wage-earners to virtual slavery, 
if the wage-earner is ruined, what will become of the 
retail merchant, the pastor, the teacher, the lawyer? 
Even the physician and the journalist cannot live in a 
mendicant world. 

With such a Cabinet, one wonders what kind of a 
new Supreme Court, President Harding and the United 
States Senate intend to create after the very old men 
go, as five of them should already be gone ? 

Will "Injunction Bill" Taft be paid for allowing the 



1S6 

League to be defeated by being made Chief Justice? If 
so, how will that help labor and the oppressed? 

The Republicans pronounce this "a great Cabinet;" 
it is great — for their purposes of forwarding the day 
when the plutocrats will snap their fingers at the labor- 
ing people and say safely, "Take it, or leave it and 
starve to death." An empire like that of the latter 
days of Rome marches on. 

This Harding Cabinet is a reflex, of course, of the 
confused, unprincipled mind of the man himself. It 
contains good and evil unbalanced. 

In age, it is excessive. Several are sixty and over. 
It is a Cabinet of OLD MEN. 

Kipling once wrote of them, "They will take up the 
ropes that constrained their youth to bind on their chil- 
dren's hands. They will call to the waters below the 
bridges to return and replenish the land ; they will har- 
ness horses, Death's pale horses, and scholarly plow 
the sands." 

But Kipling did not know these Old Men, these El- 
der Statesmen of America. They are working for 
their own interests. Their game is to keep whatever 
for the past they can and to stop all the progress into 
a fairer world from happening, that they can. 

Their god is Personal Success. Their country is 
the country of the rich. 

THE WANDERERS 

From city unto city, Homer, the sweet singer, begged 

his bread. 
Because he told the living the songs of heroes who 

were dead. 

Pure Dante, fate-announcer, went on exile for his God ; 
He ate their salt at others tables, and on their stairs 
he trod. 



137 

"Oh, beggars, be damned!" so say the lords of power 

and fear and food, 
They left our country for our obedient country's good. 

In brutal foolishness, we tramp the hearth-fires of the 

sages out; 
Comes patient Time, and puts the furious multitudes 

to rout. 

Whom the fathers thought but "madmen" in their own 

dark night. 
The children crown immortal on radiant thrones of 

light. 

They hated the lords of ill-got wealth and pitied 
poverty ; 

They fought the cruel legal lawless and loved the tran- 
quil free. 

Who were "the just made perfect?" The starved or 

jailed, exiled or maimed, 
The quarry of kings dungeoned, slain by cross or fire, 

or ashamed. 

Behold! The Son of Man no place had to lay His 

sovereign head — 
Beyond the Gates of Pearl, He rules the living and 

the dead. 

They yielded up the Present to make the Future theirs, 

and saw 
From far the glory of the shining of the moral law. 

Now this is the Law forever — Only the best shall rule. 
And all the good shall be happy from Yuletide unto 
Yule. 

What the country of free Americans needs are two 
PROCLAMATIONS upon every billboard and at every 
crossroad. 



138 

Proclamation 1.— INVITATION. 

Let the rich come to the Executive Departments 
and let us, the rich, do business with them. What 
rich? Well, the protective tariff manufacturers espe- 
cially, and the OIL men. We are rich, and we know 
how you feel. Be at home in Washington. 

Proclamation 2.— WARNING. 

Let the rich who are importers and exporters or 
international bankers, except the Morgans, stay away 
from Washington. Let the rich who manufacture in 
open competition with the world stay away. Let the 
rich who are merchants or landowners stay away. And 
let all the poor and most of the middle class stay away. 
This is not your day. Let the little bankers also stay 
away. Yours is to play our game for us, and profess 
to like it. 

But where is Warren Gamaliel Harding in all this? 
Where has he always been? He is ready with the rub- 
ber stamp just behind the scenes. He is Warren Yea- 
and-Nay-and-Wait till someone else makes up my mind 
for me. 

Much has been said about the importance of geo- 
graphical distribution of Cabinet members. In this 
Cabinet — 

Pennsylvania has two, Mellon and Davis. 

New York has one, Hughes. 

Massachusetts has one. Weeks. 

Ohio has one, Daugherty. 

Indiana has one. Hays. 

Arizona has one. Fall. 

California has one. Hoover. 

Iowa has one, Wallace. 

Michigan has one, Denby. 

Massachusetts, however, has Speaker Gillett, of 
the House of Representatives. A poor man is worse 
off in Massachusetts than in any other American State. 



139 

A creditor can seize even the beefsteak off his table 
or the clock on his wall, for debt or even claim of debt. 
The poor are slaves, white slaves, there. 

But Mellon, Davis, Hays and Fall all mean Boies 
Penrose — Weeks and Denby mean Henry Cabot Lodge. 

Only Hughes, Hoover and Wallace mean themselves. 
And of these Hoover in no sense represents California 
interests, for he is both a patriot and internationalist. 
Senator Hiram Johnson hates him. It is an unfortu- 
nate animosity, for Johnson is far from the worst of 
the Republicans. 

Hughes never was a leader, thugh he has often 
four-flushed trying to lead. Hoover is a leader, and 
he has four-flushed but once so far in his life. But 
when did the haunch of the dog ever select his course? 
Davis is the tail of the Cabinet, the mixer and the 
jollier for that plotting group. 

For seriousness, for gloom that actually dulls the 
knife that is used to try to cut it, where could we turn 
and get more of this than in Hughes and Mellon? 
There are but two really genial souls unafraid of any- 
one else, glad to welcome the next fellow in this lot — 
Davis and Wallace. Even Hoover likes to hide away 
with a few papers and statistics and frame up his plans 
alone. Hays passes for a mixer, but he mixes with 
rich and stand-pat Republicans only. As for Warren 
himself, whoever saw him in a crowd anywhere than 
hidden away from too close a view — if he could ar- 
range it? 

As for being spendthrift hosts at public functions, 
not these millionaires. They are one and all thrifty, 
even those who inherited wealth — Mellon, Weeks and 
Denby. This is perhaps well. 

To understand this Cabinet, one must understand 
Daugherty ; and to understand him, which he does not 
desire, one must understand Ohio politics. 



140 



CHAPTER XI 
OHIO POLITICAL HISTORY 

Ohio is the most political State in the Union. In 
Ohio, politics is the real religion. More persons talk 
politics in Oho per thousand of the population (and 
they talk politics longer and with more acerbity) than 
in any other State. Everything in Ohio gives way to 
this first interest. If there were anything in the 
notion that public interest insures honesty and honor 
in politics, then Ohio would be the cleanest State in 
the Union. Of course, it is not the worst State, be- 
cause in Ohio there is a fight between the two great 
parties for supremacy, and while in general the Repub- 
licans have been the winners, yet there have been 
enough Democratic periods to keep the war very much 
alive. 

In Ohio, the Republicans start with two enormous 
groups behind them — all the negroes and most of the 
Grand Army of the Republic, who, until recent years, 
have polled a very heavy vote. The negroes number 
now about 400,000 of persons with race-consciousness 
and class-consciousness that they have colored blood. 
This means that they make one-twelfth of the popu- 
lation. In Columbus, they now number fully 45,000 in 
a population of 327,000. Of course, many negroes are 
members of the G. A. R., which vote accounted for 
about a quarter of a million until recently. Occasion- 
ally, when a colored man loses race-consciousness and 
class-consciousness, he may vote the Democratic 
ticket. In truth, there is no better camouflage for the 
light-colored negro who intends to "cross the line and 



141 

become white" than to become an open and ardent 
Democrat in some part of the State where his history- 
is unknown. 

When a party can count certainly upon fully one- 
eighth of the entire population as its own, it has to 
win only three-eighths more in order to establish itself 
in power. 

The Democratic party has had as its center the 
War Copperheads, who thought that blood should not 
be spilled to keep the South in the Union. This ele- 
ment was small always. 

For its economic composition, Ohio has a rural and 
a city distribution — fishermen on the lake, miners in 
the East and South, farmers everywhere, a wonderful 
development of railroads, surpassed by no other State 
in the Union in distribution per square mile, and six 
large cities, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron, 
Dayton and Columbus, third in point of numbers, at 
the very center. These are both industrial and com- 
mercial cities. The manufactures of Ohio run mostly 
in the metals rather than in textiles or paper. 

In the years of the life of Warren Harding, Ohio 
has undergone a transformation from being mainly 
rural to being mainly urban. The ealier elements in 
the population were these, viz. : 

In the North, New England settlers, largely from 
Connecticut. 

In the South, Virginia settlers. 
In the middle sections, these were infiltrated by 
the Pennsylvania Dutch. 

At various points, there were Germans, such as 
Cincinnati and the Miami Valley, and in the middle 
counties. 

The last part of the State to be settled was the 
northwest, including the marvellously rich Maumee 



142 

Valley, which was very densely wooded and was and 
yet is swampy. 

But sixty years since the Civl War began have 
changed the scene. The New England element has 
spread everywhere, though but thinly, for the fam- 
ilies are small. 

The old German element has prospered and spread 
very widely, but has tended to spread not as single 
families but in groups and communities or wards of 
cities. For practical purposes, except in respect to the 
names, this old German element does not differ from 
the Anglo-Saxon New England and Virtinia elements. 
It has, however, been reinforced by new German 
streams, some of which has tended to weaken their 
love of liberty. 

In greatest part, the Virginia element has stayed 
in the south of the State. Great numbers of negroes 
and colored people have come in from the South. They 
have had but small families and poor success, but they 
have persisted in the immigration none the less. The 
climate of the State in the north is ill-adapted to the 
negro constitution. 

Tens of thousands have come from the Old World — 
Ohio is a favorite point for Hungarians, Poles, Italians, 
Russian Jews, Greeks, but not for Scandinavians, 
Dutch, English, Irish, or the other peoples that in such 
numbers have come across the seas to try their for- 
tunes in the New World. 

There is a new Ohio — Industrial, urban, disorderly, 
ignorant, unambitious, inferior. 

Unfortunately, the rural districts in many parts of 
the State have fallen into intellectual and moral de- 
cay hrough losing their ablest men and women to the 
cities ; they lack their normal leaders born among them 
and familiar with their desires and notions. Rural 
Ohio is no longer full of reading people. 



143 

Three-quarters of all the college and university- 
students of the State come from the cities and towns 
from four thousand to one hundred thousand in popula- 
tion, and not from the thinly settled rural districts or 
from the six great cities. 

This change from the old intellectual and moral 
Ohio to the present social state has been attended by 
some very severe political struggles. 

The first that may perhaps be mentioned is the 
struggle between the CITIES and the RURAL DIS- 
TRICTS, or FARMERS. This has been chiefly a strug- 
gle over taxes. The farmers have claimed that the 
cities have all the moneys and they have the most 
of the taxes. Of course, because the cities have the 
banks, they have control of the credits. 

The second struggle has been between Cleveland 
and Cincinnati. Fifty years ago Cincinnati was the 
great city ; now Cleveland has almost doubled the popu- 
lation. 

The third struggle has been between the *'drys" 
and the "wets." 

The fourth struggle has been between the corpora- 
tions and the citizens who have little or no corporate 
properties or claims. 

A fifth struggle has been between old forms of 
wealth for the older elements in the population and 
the new forms of wealth ; lands against paper 
securities. 

A sixth struggle has been between the men who 
could vote and the women who could not. 

A seventh struggle has been between the old fam- 
ilies and the new immigrants. 

All these struggles have registered themselves at 
the polls and in the State Legislature. 

It was in 1899 that Warren Harding broke into 
Ohio State politics. Daugherty was already known 



144 

then; for he is half a dozen years older than the man 
whom he has made, and he began at an earlier age. 

The Governors of Ohio since that time have been 
as follows, viz.: 

George K. Nash, Myron T. Herrick, John M. Patti- 
son (died in office), Andrew D. Harris, Judson Har- 
mon, James M. Cox, Frank B. Willis, Cox again, Harry 
L. Davis (now in office) . 

Nash was a lawyer and a politician. He was part 
and parcel of the Hanna-Dick-Daugherty machine 
which was at bitter enemity with the Foraker-George 
B. Cox-Bushnell machine. 

Hanna was a Cleveland steamboat and steel man, 
who made a great fortune, was amazingly energetic, 
fought Tom L. Johnson in Cleveland, put William Mc- 
Kinley into the White House, loaned to him enough 
money to pay his unfortunate business debts, and 
owned him body, soul and breeches, so that McKinley 
never named a man to office until Hanna had told him 
to do it, and finally bribed his way through the Ohio 
Legislatui'e and became a Senator of the United States. 
He was a bitter, violent enemy of Theodore Roosevelt, 
and a warm personal friend of many of the vilest 
men and women in the part of the United States that 
he knew. Fortunately, he died at a compartively early 
age, in 1904, and by being cleared away, left some op- 
portunity for Roosevelt, when President, to get some 
good work done. He is the father of Dan R. Hanna, 
who owns the CLEVELAND NEWS, and is now di- 
vorced from his fourth wife; and also of Ruth Hanna 
McCormick, wife of United States Senator Medill Mc- 
Cormick, of Illinois, who is one of the owners of the 
CHICAGO TRIBUNE, said by itself to be "the great- 
est newspaper in the world," perfectly correct, though 
not unpatriotic a paper that fights Mayor William 
Hale Thompson of Chicago, millionaire boss of that 



145 

city, and now also of the State of Illinois ; is not utterly 
hopeless as a moral agency. 

Hanna was not quite the worst man that American 
politics has put forward; Burr was worse. Nor was 
William McKinley the worst or even weakest Presi- 
dent whom we have had; in truth, he ranks well when 
compared with some. He was at least a gentleman by 
instinct. Hanna made him. 

Who is the Hanna of Harding? He says that he 
desires to follow in the footsteps of the Martyr Mc- 
Kinley. God forbid that he should be required to fol- 
low all the way- 

Hanna was "wet." He was a bulldozer; he was 
corrupt to the center ; but he had intelligence and fore- 
sight and vigor. Like Boss Croker, he worked all the 
time for his own pocket. But he was an abler man far 
than the Tammany boss. 

Dick was a machine man from Akron, who became 
United States Senator, an untiring worker for the Re- 
publican party, sometimes well-to-do, sometimes poor 
from bad business ventures. He was a man of but 
little natural ability. He was the typical party politi- 
cal worker. 

Daugherty was the Columbus part of this machine ; 
a man who knew the State Capital, and also worked 
hard for the party. He spent Hanna's money for him 
skilfully and hid the work well enough for the time 
being. 

Foraker was the Cincinnati lawyer, a Standard Oil 
man, an orator, who had been Governor of the State in 
times past. He was always known as the leader of 
this negro vote, though himself a white man. He be- 
came United States Senator, and on the floor of Con- 
gress and in the lobbies and in the departments, he 
spent much time working for his various clients, per- 
sonal and corporate. He was a natural born worker 



146 

for his friends, whether the public benefited thereby 
or not. He became rich through corrupt methods, but 
finally, through the efforts of Theodore Roosevelt and 
of William Randolph Hearst, he lost his seat in the 
Senate. It was a strange alliance, denied by both per- 
sons, but effective nonetheless. Hanna always claimed 
that Hearst aroused the enmity of the people against 
McKinley through attacks upon himself in order that 
Roosevelt might become President — a claim that en- 
raged Roosevelt. 

The frightful cartoons of Davenport against Hanna 
in the Hearst papers were cited as the moving cause 
of the murder of McKinley by Czolgoez in 1901. If big 
business had refrained from its efforts to make 
America a plutocrat's Paradise, the cartoons would 
never have been necessary to arouse the people. But 
as the murderer had never learned English and had 
been in this country only a few years, and had come as 
an anarchist with the avowed purpose to tear down 
the Government, the claim of Hanna is far-fetched. He 
probably never saw any Davenport cartoon. 

Whatever else is true, this is true that the suc- 
cession of Roosevelt to the Presidency was a most 
fortunate event for America at that time. 

The succession of Johnson in 1865 to Abraham 
Lincoln was an unmixed calamity ; and that of Arthur 
to Garfield in 1881 was very regrettable. But McKin- 
ley never really was President. Hanna was regent 
over him. 

Who is regent over his disciple, Harding? 

Hearst downed Foraker; but George B. Cox gave 
way only when the Angel of Death called. He was 
the boss of Cincinnati; very rich, living in a magnifi- 
cent home without visible means of support. No city 
was ever owned by any boss more tightly than Cox 
owned Cincinnati. How he acquired this control is 



147 

mysterious but not impossible to learn. He kept all his 
promises, delivered the goods, told the truth to his 
friends was as silent as the grave; otherwise, was a 
cheerful, amiable, healthy person, who had a genius 
for getting offices and contracts for the faithful and 
for being paid himself as part of every bargain. 

Bushnell has passed with very little record. He 
was State Governor once. 

Such were the two machines in the same party. It 
was Cleveland and Columbus then against Cincinnati. 

Nash was Governor while Harding was State 
Senator. He fell in with the Daugherty machine first ; 
but was silent enough and hid himself enough in the 
background not to antagonize the Cincinnati people. 

At this period, State Senator Warren G. Harding 
was about thirty-five years old, wife forty-one years 
old, who ran his business for him, and with a father- 
in-law who hated him and called him a "nigger" to his 
face and behind his back and who would not allow him 
to enter his home. He was always called by the nick- 
name, "Nig," at this time; but if anyone had told him 
that he would be President of the United States, he 
would not have taken it seriously, for all that he al- 
ready had, had been given to him by others. He was 
only a printer who did not try to edit or write for his 
own paper, which, in fact, was his wife's. There was 
an "able editor" in the payroll by the name of Van 
Fleet. State Senator Harding was the creature of 
the circumstances. 

The issues in the period of Governor Nash were 
these, viz. : 

1. Economy in State expenditures. This, of course, 
was pressed by the farmers. 

2. Annual reports by corporations, which were still 
free from inspection. This also was pressed by the 



148 

farmers and likewise by the older property interests, 
such as lands. 

3. Legislation to protect labor. This showed the 
influences coming from the new industrial life oj the 
State. The cities and the miners asked for this 

4. Better supervision of penal and reformatory in- 
stitutions. Back in 1900 conditions were even worse 
than they are now in these institutions in Ohio. 

5. Reduction and abolition of the State tax levy 
and leaving all taxes to be collected by the counties 
as such. 

6. An annual tax upon coiTDorations. 

7. Full immediate payment of the State debts. 

8. Revision of the State game laws. 

It does not appear that Warren Harding exerted or 
tried to exert any influence upon these matters, but 
he voted right; that is, he found out what Hanna 
wanted, and he filled in accordingly. 

Then came what looks like an astonishing thing — 
Harding was nominated for the Lieutenant Governor^ 
ship in 1904 ; he had been tried out as presiding officer 
of a State Republican Convention and found safe; 
he would stand without hitching and go without whip- 
ping; and do what he had been told to do. Myron T. 
Herrick was the candidate for Governor ; and Theodore 
Roosevelt was candidate for President. Herrick and 
Harding went in on the Presidential tide. It matters 
but little now that in order to win, Roosevelt lied about 
the campaign contributions from the life insurance 
companies as charged against him by Alton B. Parker. 
Later he apologized, but Cortelyou had the money to 
use; and they won. 

This raises the question who Myron T. Herrick was 
and is. 

This man came from a family on a farm in the 
north of Ohio, without education, and almost without 



149 

morals. But he got in; he married a well-to-do lady 
of Dayton ; he got into banking in Cleveland ; and soon 
he was a millionaire. He is a positive person, of strong 
constitution, without the capacity of feeling any nausea 
over political rottenness. He has since been Ambassa- 
dor to France, and confirmed to go again. He has be- 
come part of the vast banking fraternity of Cleveland, 
and is of unknown wealth, perhaps ten or twenty mil- 
lions. 

He is the larger owner of the DAYTON JOURNAL, 
which is published by the Burkham-Herrick Company, 
and which libelled Professor William Estabrook 
Chancellor in the last campaign, by charging that he 
had retracted that which he had not done. He had 
done nothing, and he retracted nothing. This is why 
he has been lost to the people and is living, if at all, in 
some spot unknown even to his own family. We have 
elsewhere explained who did publish the reports re- 
garding the Harding ancestry. 

Of course, as Lieutenant Governor, Warren Hard- 
ing had nothing of importance to do with legislation. 
He was always addressed even at this time by Gov- 
ernor Herrick as "Nig" Harding. But the Governor 
was rich and Harding was really only a printer. 

Though at this time there came a great change in 
Ohio politics through the grant to the Governor of the 
veto power, Herrick got almost nothing done. This 
Legislature over which, in the upper branch, Warren 
Harding presided, passed a law legalizing race track 
gambling, but Herrick was decent enough to veto it. 

The Legislature was thoroughly reactionary. It 
killed a bill for improving the state banks, another to 
regulate the new interurban electric lines, a third to 
improve the state militia, and it brought together the 
State and the National elecions, which has helped the 
bosses to control the State Government, as it was in- 



150 ' ■ 

tended to do. This bill was a measure to strengthen 
the politcal machines of Cleveland, Cincinnati, Colum- 
bus and Toledo. The more officers are voted for in 
one election, the less the people think about the minor 
ones. Then the politicians can do as they please about 
filling such offices. 

The Herrick administration refused to revise the 
school code of the state. This code was in very bad 
shape. It allowed the poorer districts to have little or 
no schooling, and in most of the counties there was 
absolutely no supervision of any kind. Educators had 
been reading a famous book by City School Superin- 
tendent VV. E. Chancellor, who afterwards became 
Professor of Politics and Economics at the College 
of Wooster; he had served in several large Eastern 
cities, such as Patterson, N. J., and Washington, D. C, 
and they wished to try out in Ohio his ideas regard- 
ing supervision and small school board. But Herrick 
passed all the subject up with the contempt that 
Napolean displayed for Pestalozzi ; it was a matter for 
childi'en not for men. 

For the new code, Harding had nothing to say. 
Himself not even a graduate of a rural high school, 
education was meaningless to him, as it is today. Has 
he not "succeeded" far beyond the college-reared men ? 
Why get an education when by standing by at con- 
venient places, one can do better still ? 

Of course. Boss Cox, of Cincinnati, was opposed to 
the school reform plans. Ninety-eight per cent of all 
the moneys spent by the Cincinnati school board for 
books was spent with one single book company, 
friendly with Cox. 

In this period, both Herrick and Harding did all 
that they could to block a local option bill upon the 
liquor question, and what legislation was passed, was 



151 

entirely acceptable to the liquor people; it left all the 
downtown sections of the cities full of saloons. 

After this, Harding wont back to the city of Marion 
with the increased prestige of having served as State 
Senator and as Lieutenant Governor, and his father- 
in-law, Amos H. Kling, was dead. He tried to get 
nominations for various offices but failed. He even 
had one run against Daugherty; but it was all under- 
stood among friends. 

Where was Harding and where was the MARION 
STAR while the great Roosevelt fight went on for bet- 
ter political and economic conditions in the nation, and 
while Ohio was trying under Pattison and Harmon to 
better its own state of affairs? 

These were some of the reforms actually ac- 
complished, viz. : 

1. A two-cent a mile railroad rate for passengers. 

2. Liquor licenses were raised from $350 to $1,000 
a year. 

3. A county local option bill became law. 

4. The Smith One Per Cent measure became law. 
This was then a step in the right direction. 

5. An employer's liability bill was passed. 

6. Children were required to go to school until six- 
teen years of age. 

7. The State Board of Public Works was organized. 

8. A corrupt practices act tended to the improve- 
ment of conditions at elections. 

9. Public service corporations were placed under 
government regulation, 

Judson Harmon was next to the best Governor that 
Ohio ever had; the best Governor was James M. Cox. 
The former would have made one of the greatest of 
Presidents, and the latter was in fact the opponent of 
Mr. Harding. It is a main purpose of this book to ex- 
plain how it has come about that a man without anv 



152 

principles of thought or conduct or decision upon the 
really important matters of Ohio and National states- 
manship became the head of Government when others 
vastly superior in each party were passed over. That 
Harmon is a really great lawyer and a fine business 
man and a statesman also, every intelligent citizen 
knows, and that he is a far more trustworthy person 
for the public interests than the man now in the White 
House is likewise plain ; but the powers behind the 
scene do not desire the welfare of the nation, not even 
that of their own posterity; they desire power now. 
Through Harding, they have it. HARDING HIMSELF 
ON MASQUERADE IS THE MASK FOR THEM- 
SELVES. He is the affable negro butler waiting at 
the front door of their palace of brigandage. He does 
not desire power or applause or even a front seat; what 
he desires are the comforts and luxuries of life; and 
these they have given to him for some years past. 

The measures that were put through by Cox, who 
defeated Willis three times for the Governship and 
was defeated by him once on the claim that he had 
"made the Legislature a rubber stamp for the Gov- 
ernor," included these items, viz.: 

1. A thoroughly workable employer's liability and 
workmen's compensation scheme. This is the best sys- 
tem in the United States. It is not popular with the 
very rich. 

2. Better state highways and a county system to 
assist these highways. This slowly became popular 
with the farmers and was much desired by the mer- 
chants. It has made the motor truck a real competitor 
with the steam and electric railways. 

3. Censorship of the motion pictures, not so good as 
it should be, but far better than in many other States. 

4. State aid in the anti-tuberculosis campaign. 



153 

5. Supervision of wild-cat securities — the so-called 
"blue sky" laws. 

6. A new reformed penitentiary and a very greatly 
improved system of paroling prisoners. 

7. Restriction of th elabor hours for women and 
children. 

8. Municipal home rule. 

9. A state liquor license commission. 

10. Various legislative commissions, including one 
to study mothers' pension, the State school system, and 
a farm credit system. 

11. A State Department of Agriculture. 

12. Decrease of the State elected officers in the in- 
terest of a short ballot with a few responsible men. 

13. Increased suffrage for women. 

14. Some financial relief to cities. 

15. A State home for crippled children. 

16. Creation of a bipartisan board of pardons and 
clemacy of two persons under the governor to give all 
their time to this duty. 

17. The whole movement for defeating pro-Ger- 
manism in the World War, so far as this was a State 
matter. 

18. Complete prohibition. 

19. Complete woman's suffrage. 

20. Actual economy under the supervision of the 
State Auditor, who became the candidate of the Demo- 
crats for the Governorship in 1920, but was defeated 
in the general debacle of the Democrats. 

In the midst of all these Cox reforms, Frank B. 
Willis served one term during which his motto, "Let 
the people attend to their own business and the Gov- 
ernor keep out of the fray," resulted in the fact that 
"What is everyone's business is no one's business." He 
is commonly considered the poorest Governor Ohio 



154 

ever had, bar none, but he was elected all the same 
to the United States Senate. 

The presence of this man in Ohio politics would 
be an enigma anywhere else than in this State of too 
much politics. It may be well to pause a few moments 
to consider the man himself. 

Frank B. Willis served a term or two in Congress, 
and when he was defeated, he wept tears in public. 
He vowed that he would never go again to Washing- 
ton until he went to some worthwhile office again. He 
is the sentimentalist supreme. 

He has a wonderful voice, the best voice of any 
speaker in American public life excepting only Wil- 
liam Jennings Bryan ; it is loud and deep, marvel- 
lously loud, a foghorn voice, but pleag^nt. 

He is a thorough gentleman. 

He is and always has been an ardent prohibitionist. 

He remembers the faces of his friends and ac- 
quaintances. 

He once taught various subjects in a little college 
in the West of the State and filled every office that 
he could with its graduates. He is now its most 
prominent alumnus. 

He has a passion to speak anywhere at any time, 
and is a very frequent speaker at educational meet- 
ings, especially high school commencements and wom- 
en's clubs. 

He knows the history of Ohio, and has a speech 
upon it that claims half the great men of America for 
Ohio. This is very popular. 

He is scrupulously free from bribe-taking, and does 
not even associate with corruptionists. He is a very 
devout Methodist. 

Why then is he not a valuable man in public life? 

He is the man who nomnated Harding at the Chi- 
cago Convention in a speech ending with the exhorta- 



155 

tion, "Come on, boys and girls, let's make him Presi- 
dent!" 

1. Frank B. Willis is to all serious and intelligent 
men a joke. Why? Because he is an undeveloped boy. 

2. He has no knowledge of or interest in the larger 
problem of American life. 

3. He has no knowledge of human nature ; but as- 
sumes that everyone else is an innocent as himself. 
He cannot discern between man and man. 

4. He is a total failure in getting anything done; 
he prefers to talk. 

He has been a pawn upon the chess board of Ohio 
politics, and is now advanced to the King's row again 
in Washington. By being in the Senate, he has kept 
some abler man out, in this case a Cincinnati manu- 
facturer, who is a philanthropist and a man of high 
attainments. Like a baloon, he has floated again into 
the National Capitol itself. This man expects to be- 
come President. After Harding and Taft, will America 
ever again tolerate an Ohio President? 

Of course, he is not a personal friend of the present 
President; their tastes are too different; but he has 
played the game for him. A megaphone bass voice is a 
mighty asset. This man is Ike the late Julius Caesar 
Burrows, of Michigan, who rose to the Senatorship on 
his own wind. 

Did Warren Harding put hs shoulder to the wheel 
and work with the "drys?" He did not. Instead, he 
allowed the Marion Brewery to give to him three 
shares to keep him quiet as the ostensible head of the 
STAR daily newspaper. 

Did Warren Harding give the women a lift toward 
equal suffrage? It might be supposed that with a 
wife who was his financial genius he would favor 
woman suffrage ; but he did nothing for their cause. 

Did Warren Harding at any time help the fight 



166 

against the seizure of the Ohio canals by the railroads 
and corporations gratis ? No ! 

Did he work for the great revision of the State 
Constitution in the period when he was still at home 
in the State? He did not. 

Did he ever at any time support any progressive 
measure ? No ! 

What did he do all through these critical years? 
Wait. He did not even listen. He was not interested. 
It has been said truthfully of some men that they 
seemed to have a prevision of high destinies. Not so 
this man. Abraham Lincoln thought that some day 
he would be President. So did Wilson. Garfield had 
the same dream. Harding has had no illusions. Is this 
evidence of high powers? Some would have us think 
so. Some really profess to believe that great men do 
not know that they are great. 

Of course, some great men do underestimate 
themselves. Napoleon did that. BUT George Wash- 
ington never hid himself from public view. Except 
in seeking the Presidency, Harding has never over- 
estimated himself; as he said, naively, after the elec- 
tion, more than once, "It was a bigger job than I 
thought." 

Willis did not secure the Presidency for Harding by 
his speech at the Convention, though he seems to 
thnk that he did so. We have reports of many eye- 
witnesses that it was the saddest, most anxious, hottest 
mass of men ever gotten togeher for any such pur- 
pose. There was sadness because the realized what 
they were being put up to do; there was anxiety be- 
cause they were afraid that they would be discovered 
in regard to what all the crooks among them were be- 
ing paid for doing; and there was heat because it 
was less hot outside than in, terrific as the heat was, 
than the hotness of their sculs at one another because 



157 

they were not being given a free choice, and because 
some were being paid much more money and were be- 
ing promised much finer offices than others were. 
Willis cheered them a bit just as any other vaude- 
ville performer might have done, and his speech re- 
quired less real ability than do most of the stunts of 
acknowledged comedians. 

It is well to go back for a brief second considera- 
tion of the Ohio State Legislature. No State Legisla- 
ture in America is really free from bad influences and 
clear of bad methods of legislation ; but few are worse 
than Ohio. So far as committee chairmanships are 
concerned, these are arranged before hand by the great 
bosses, seldom themselves members of the Legislature. 
In addition, there are steering committees that help 
the passage of some bill and block the progress of 
others. A few insiders run these steering commit- 
tees. Then there are party caucuses at which the 
things to be tried in the name of the party are de- 
termined behind closed doors. What between the 
bosses, the steering committees and the caucuses, the 
welfare of the public becomes a matter difficult to re- 
member even by the honest men in the Legislature. 

Let us take an illustration. In 1902, the Hanna- 
Dick-Daugherty machine controlled the Legislature, 
and Nash was governor. Both Hanna and Boss Cox 
of Cincinnati were on hand. Hanna gave out the state- 
ment that he would regard every vote for a Foraker 
man as a vote against himself; he had been elected by 
one majority, to the United States Senate, and he had 
not forgotten what that had cost in money and anxiety. 
He meant to try for re-election in 1904. Foraker was 
trying to get into the Senate by getting Dick out. The 
State was to be redistricted for Congressional Repre- 
senatives, and gerrymandering could be fixed in such 
a way to help Hanna or hurt him, help Foraker or hurt 



158 

him. Here Daugherty stepped in and made Hanna 
surrender to himself for his own two personal candi- 
dates, the speakership and the clerkship of the House, 
which positions men named McKinnon and McEleroy 
secured in consequence. But in the Senate, the Foraker 
men won. Then came on a struggle for the chairman- 
ships and in the Senate Cox defeated all the plans of 
Hanna and Daugherty. In the House, the Daugherty 
men won. Speaker McKinnon was enabled, through 
his office, to gerrymander in a special bill the Twelfth 
Ohio Congressional District, exactly as Daugherty de- 
sired. 

In 1904, Hanna got everything that he asked from 
the Ohio Legislature. After the death of Hanna in 
this year, the machine was taken over by Dick and 
Herrick, Boss Cox ceased to fight the men from the 
North of the State. In respect to one of the most im- 
porant measures at this time — that of abolishing 
Spring elections in the State — the CLEVELAND 
PLAIN DEALER said that it "brought out the most 
amazing example of subserviency to party bosses in 
the entire histoiy of legislation in Ohio." See issue 
of March 11, 1904. 

While we are looking into this matter, it is profit- 
able to remember that Hanna vv^as a "wet." Those who 
think that liquor destroys human abilities do well to 
forget the case of Mark Hanna ; he was wet by example 
as well as by precept. Herrick was just as wet; per- 
haps this is a cause contributory others why he desires 
the opportunity to return to France as Ambassador 
from America. But, of course, the present crowd in 
control of the Republican party are all "wets" — Am- 
bassador to Great Britain George B. McClellan Harvey 
included. Of course, also, the British and the French 
are "wets." This makes these leading Republicans 
pei*sonae gratae in Europe. The pious hypocrites of 



159 

the churches who voted for the Republican party in the 
last election, themselves pretending to be "dry," knew 
what the truth was. 

When Harry M. Daugherty as Attorney General of 
the United States declared recently that the only way 
he knew in which to make the States dry was to drink 
them dry, he Vv'as merely reciting his life-creed. Hanna, 
Herrick and Daugherty, the makers of Harding, were 
all "wets." But for the death of Hanna upon February 
15, 1904, the Brannock Local Option Bill would not 
have been passed in April of the same year. 

It is well to remember that Hanna was the enemy 
of Tom Johnson, the reform Mayor of Cleveland, who 
brought up Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War un- 
der President Wilson. This concerns the hatred of 
Dan Hanna against Wilson, which was personal be- 
cause of his father. And as has been shown else- 
where in detail, it concerns the kind of attacks made 
by WaiTen Harding upon President Wilson. 

It would be interesting to recount here something 
of the relations of Theodore E. Burton and of William 
Howard Taft to these matters in detail. But to do so 
would carry far afield. It is enough to recite that 
Burton is a legal light, a scholar and a banker, who has 
stood for clean politics so far as he has been able to do 
so within the ranks of the regulars of the Republican 
party. He is a bachelor and not rich. He attained the 
United States Senatorship and is now back in the 
House of Representatives. Burton has consistently op- 
posed everything that Hanna stood for. There is a 
story of the time when Harding was chosen to preside 
over a Republican State Convention at Dayton twenty 
years ago. Everything that the bosses desired done 
was done, much to the digust of Burton, who told this 
to Harding himself at the end of the affair in no un- 
certain language. 



160 

Burton almost belongs in the same rank with the 
late Allen G. Thurman, the war horse of the Democ- 
racy of Ohio, and a United States Senator two genera- 
tions ago. But the Republican leaders in the interests 
of the plutocracy have taken up the little men and 
have turned down the great one. 

It is an illustration of what Burton was and is, 
that when in Congress he came in his own person to 
Columbus and appeared before two committees of the 
House and Senate and argued for the adoption of the 
Australian ballot. This was just before the death of 
Governor Pattison, and according to the newspapers 
of the time, Hanna and Boss Cox then got the bill 
defeated. 

As for Taft, he sold out to Harding in the last 
campaign, as he had so often sold out to the rotten 
powers of the , darkness of Republicanism in times 
past, not for money, perhaps not from promise of 
place — though we shall see what comes as to that; 
but in the main, because he is at heart a complaisant 
man who prefers to keep on good terms with Brother 
Charles, the multissimo-millionaire, and with his wife's 
sister of the the steel independents, Jones & Laughlin, 
Pittsburgh. Taft has no capacity for self-sacrifice — 
such as Roosevelt certainly did have, nor has he the 
courage of his very great friend. 

There was a fundamental difference politically be- 
tween Johnson and Hanna as to the proper authority 
for the granting of street railway franchises. John- 
son asserted that the cities where these were to operate 
should grant them, while Hanna asserted that every 
franchise should come from the State. Each of these 
men had large railroad interests; but there was this 
difference that Hanna was willing to pay money to 
legislators to get franchises while Johnson was not. 
On this point. Burton stood with Johnson, which did 



161 

not please Hanna. What Johnson was after was a 
three-cent carfare in Cleveland for his people there. 
Hanna was no philanthropist of this kind. 

A tremendous home rule sentiment was built up by 
Johnson, which today controls Ohio, very largely. Bur- 
ton stood for this also. 

If we could trust the reports of the newspapers 
for the period when Harding was State Senator and 
Lieutenant Governor, the lobby employed by the great 
corporations numbered from 150 to 200 men, and the 
votes necessary to carry or to defeat single measures 

cost the corporations from $500 to $1,000 each. Of 
course, there were members who went down to the 
Legislature poor men and who remained such; but 
there were more men who grew comfortably well off 
by the sales of their votes. Such was the Legislature 
of Ohio at the period when Harding got his formatve 
training. There is no evidence that he was even paid 
anything for any vote; or that he acquired any prop- 
erty through this period. He has never been well-to- 
do. The pleasure that his wife expressed at being 
allowed to go to New York to buy clothes after the 
election of her husband, and her statement that at last 
she felt that she "could afford to have nice things" 
was real. The newspapers reports that the Hardings 
were worth several hundred thousand dollars were 
absurd. The property that they occupied in Marion 
cost but a few thousand dollars, and the STAK build- 
ing with all its machnery represents nothing in the 
nature of hundreds of thousands of dollars ; it is dingy 
and small. They owned but little else in November, 
1920. The Republican pictures of the Warren Hard- 
ing as a great newspaper man of business was nothing 
but "campaign talk." The house in Washington owned 
when he was Senator is by no means a great affair. 



it\2 

The STAR is a co-operative entei-prise and has 
many small stockholders. 

We may take one more look at this Legislature in 
which Warren Harding sat as Senator, sat and did 
nothing but "vote right;" that is, as the bosses told 
him to do. The Senators were of an average age of 
forty-two years; the Representatives were two years 
older on the average. There were sevnty-five mem- 
bers in both branches together, a mere handful as com- 
pared w^ith many State Legislatures. As Harding 
never went to college, this was his higher education. 
He was one of the younger members. In respect to 
their educations, there is this curious fact. Not much 
over one-third of them had been to high school; but 
most as many had been to college ; this means that the 
men who had gone through high school had gone to 
college also. 

Among so many who had nothing but elementar>' 
schooling, Harding was at home. He said but little, 
though he was usually present and voted. Almost 
one-half of all the Senators were lawyers, mostly 
trained in private law offices in country towns. 

In this same Senate, twenty had had previous ex- 
perience in the Legislature, while the other thirteen 
members were political neophytes "greenhorns." 

The sessions lasted but three months nominally, 
though the actual committee and other work length- 
ened somewhat the time put in by the more serious 
and important men. 

More than half of all the members were mcimbcrs 
of the Masonic order ; at this period Harding was net a 
member of this order, though he became such later, 
and after his election, was raised to the very high 
degree of thirty -second at a special convocation. This 
was done regularly. It is said that all but two men 



163 

who have been inaugurated President were Masons; 
but this cannot now be verified. 

After Harding ceased to be Lieutenant Governor, 
he seems to have lost what little interest he ever had 
in State affairs. Very few editorials that appeared in 
the Marion STAR dealt with State problems ; and prob- 
ably he wrote not many even of these, for he returned 
to his work as foreman of the composing room, where 
he was happy setting up type and seeing to the press 
work, while his wife managed the outer office and 
Editor Van Fleet, with his assistants, furnished copy. 

When he became United States Senator, as we 
have told elsewhere, and went to Washington, Colum- 
bus passed out of his mind. He never tried to come 
back as did Hanna and Foraker and manage the State 
also. He had no light to throw upon State problems, 
;ind he had no axes to grind, for the selection was by 
popular vote. 

Before leaving this phase of the matter, it is worth 
while to notice that if Governor Ha? ,i:on had not 
forced the "corrupt practices act" through, Harding 
would never have become Senator, for this legislation 
cost Attorney General Timothy S. Hogan his defeat 
when he ran against Harding in 1914. Hogan w^as the 
man who sent several hundred bribers and bribees to 
the penitentiary in Adams County and thereby made 
himself very unpopular with politicians generally. 

It is well to note also that Harding stayed gen- 
erally with the politicians from the middle and North 
of the State, the growing parts, especially with the 
Columbus men. He did not consort with the rural 
people or much with those from Cleveland or Cincin- 
nati. Indeed, in general, he kept out of the limelight 
and out of the centers of the conflicts and made but 
few enemies. 

Whatever the other "boys" did, he did, from chew- 



164 

ing and smoking and drinking and and playing poker, 
to all the rest so far as he could afford their pleasures ; 
he was no Puritan. There was some talk about his 
colored blood even then, but he was inoffensive and 
never resented his nickname. The richer men, who 
were few, saw but little of him. Week-ends he often 
went home to Marion. He never kept house in Colum- 
bus, but boarded. He had a brother and a sister both 
living there, one a physician and the other a teacher in 
the school for the blind, being herself blind. This sis- 
ter, Mary, is very dark, and was never considered any- 
thing but colored. His brother is very light com- 
pexlioned and only Southernors or anthropologists 
would question his white race. This brother, Charles, 
secured a very much better education than Warren 
ever cared to try to get. He is a reputable physician 
with a modest general practice, who, doubtless, ex- 
ceedingly regrets that his brother has brought the 
family affairs to light. Indeed he has said so 
vigorously. 

In a city of 327,000 people with 32,000 negroes who 
admit that they are negroes and with at least 12,000 
more v/ho have negro blood but do not admit this to 
others, this brother was getting along nicely until the 
exposures came through the over-zeal of other negroes, 
including his father's friend, William Chancellor, black, 
of Mt. Gilead. We have explained this elsewhere. 
It comes in here because Brother Warren went to see 
Brother Charles without talking about it very much 
to other Senators. With his nickname, "Nig" Warren, 
was something of a handicap to his more successful 
younger brother at this period. He was also much 
darker, which was unpleasant to realize. Mary, how- 
ever, was not recognized publicly by the family; and 
when she died, she was not cared for by undertakers, 
but by the family itself. 



16B 



CHAPTER XII 
PRESIDENTIAL HISTORY 

In the third place, as we have said, the policy of 
Harding in the White House cannot be understood 
without some knowledge of the history of the Presi- 
dency beyond what the pretty school histories report. 
Here we shall draw heavily upon a long article that 
Professor Chancellor wrote and published some time 
ago in one of the greatest newspapers of the Conti- 
nent or the world, for he is one of the leading authori- 
ties upon the subject. 

In this article, William Estabrook Chancellor — not 
the negro Chancellor, but the white man who was 
dragged into this thing by the black man who told the 
truth for the benefit of his race and as he believed of 
Harding himself — pointed out that the Presidents of 
the United States have been of three types — the lead- 
ers, he consultants, and the subservient. There is a 
Faying that the Presidency is whatever any man in 
the office chooses to make of it — a power, an influence 
or a tool of the plutocracy. This is not wholly true, 
for when the President is not supported by a party be- 
hind him in both Houses of Congress, he cannot be a 
power in our Government of checks and balances, where 
responsibility is located everywhere and nowhere. 

George Washington was a power, a leader. The 
Vice-President was John Adams, who often spoke on 
the floor of the Senate for George Washington and 
upon twenty-two important occasions gave the tie vote 
for him. Which shows how very difficult a position 
even Washington was in, and he was one of the four 



166 

greatest men that the Nation so far has produced in 
public life, the other three being Franklin, Lincoln 
and Roosevelt. No one else ever controlled Wash- 
ington. He was a big man physically, the greatest 
athlete of his times when a young man, an incom- 
parable wrestler and horseman. Washington was 
especially apt as a writer as the twelve volumes of his 
writings show, and he left as many that were never 
published. By profession he was a civil engineer, and 
he was fourth richest man in America as a business 
man and merchant in flour. 

John Adams as President was a leader, but his 
following failed him. He had been a professor in 
Latin schools. 

Thomas Jefferson was the greatest political philoso- 
pher of our history; he v/as the man who bought 
liouisiana. He liked to get advice and then to do as 
he pleased. He was a leader, a thinker and a power, 
and his memoiy yet lives green and fresh and will live 
forever. He believed in making America a land for the 
common man, a place where freemen would be happy 
in their freedom. He was an inventor, some of his 
inventions being the present wheelbarrow, the re- 
volving chair now used in offices and the letter copy- 
ing press. He was a first-class scientific farmer and 
brought many African and European farm plants to 
America. He had Congress with him. He founded the 
University of Virginia. 

James Madison wrote more of the Constitution 
than did any other man. But in the Presidency he 
belonged to the consultant type and took too much 
advice from other men; he went to war with Great 
Britain because Henry Clay told him to do so. But he 
was not habitually subservient. He was a great polti- 
cal scholar, a thoroughly educated man like Jefferson. 

In the succession to these great men, where is little 



1«7 

Warren Harding? It is a shameful thing to present 
such a contrast to the world. 

James Monroe was merely a consultant President, 
John Quincy Adams wrote the Monroe Doctrine for 
him. But he was no one's tool. 

John Quincy Adams wiis a born thinker and scholar, 
a great diplomat, a great lawyer; after he left the 
Presidency, he did the greatest thing for human liberty 
that has been done by any American, greater even 
than the preservation of the right to worship where 
and when one will, which was due to the work of Jef- 
ferson in Virginia, He preserved the right of petition 
to Congress and of having the petitions read before 
that body in House and Senate. He gave his life to 
this work for twenty years, and he died after making 
a speech there in the Capitol. 

But he had no following as President. No one ever 
managed him for a minute after he grew up, not even 
his father, John Adams. 

Then came the most terrific person that America 
has known in public life, Andrew Jackson, who, at a 
banquet, where he was too sick to eat, told the 
Southerners this: ''The Union, it must and shall be 
preserved." This was the man who brought the new 
West and the common man into public offices. He 
broke the bureauoracy of the past, the officeholders' 
ring. 

Andrew Jackson is the general whose soldiers at 
New Orleans shot 1200 Britishers in the foreheads, and 
who lost but seven men themselves in that fight. He 
reduced the Southern Indians to subjection to the 
American military power. No man ever controlled 
him. By killing one man who slandered his wife and 
by threatening to kill others, he made it unsafe to 
slander women falsely. 

Martin Van Burean was one of the greatest lawyers 



168 

in America. He was a power in the Jackson period. 
Because of the Democratic two-thirds vote rule, he lost 
the renomination to the Presidency. 

He always did as President what "Old Hickory" 
told him to do ; otherwise, he was a power. He did not, 
however, take the bit in his teeth and run, as the 
forceful men have done. He, like Jackson, believed 
that Gold is the only money; and in their time the 
United States was entirely out of debt. He is the man 
who caused imprisonment for debt to cease in New 
York State and eventually throughout the Nation. 
He was true democrat. He would be remembered 
even if he had never been Presidnt, as most other men 
in the White House would have been rememberd by 
Amricans for a century or two. 

After serving thirty days, William Henry Harri- 
son died. He wan an energetic old man, and would 
probably have made a name for himself as an inde- 
pendent person. At the very first Cabinet meeting, 
when his Secretary of State, the great orator, Daniel 
Webster told him something that he did not like, his 
reply was, "William Henry Harrison is President." 
He had been a military hero, winning the battle of 
Tippecanoe against the Indians. 

John Tyler was nobody, a mere subservient tool of 
the slavery interests. 

James Knox Polk had been Speaker of the House 
in Congress. He also was the tool of the slavery 
lords. And he died of mortification one month after 
he left the White House because so many decent 
men thought that the Mexican War should never have 
been fought. 

Will Warren Gamaliel Harding also let the lords 
of power lead us again into a war with Mexico? 
Mexico has oil, rubber, copper and silver, and the lords 
of power Cvould have new and greater palaces and finer 



169 

yachts if we should let a few hundred thousand of 
our boys and men die in the dust and heat of that 
terrible land. 

Taylor opposed the slave lords and died after two 
years' service; he was a very independent man, a rich 
slaveholder himself and a war hero, but no coward 
when big men of business talked to him. "Old Rough 
and Ready" was a man whom Warren Harding might 
well study now. 

Fillmore advocated the Fugitive Slave Act. No 
more needs to be said. 

Notwithstanding a fine name, Franklin Pierce was 
nobody. 

James Buchanan also was a mere abject tool of 
the slavelords; and because Abraham Lincoln showed 
him up in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln became 
President. 

Lincoln is now the most beloved of all Americans, 
and is considered the best writer also. He had a great 
way of consulting everyone and then doing exactly as 
he pleased. Often he did what every big man of the 
times told him not to do. Will Harding ever do this? 

Johnson did as he pleased, not wisely. 

Is Warren Harding a Lincoln in the making, or a 
Buchanan? 

Is this period one when the lords of money and cur- 
rency and securities and labor slaves must be shown 
up? It is well to remember at this stage that Lin- 
coln was very unpopular with most big men. 

The most corrupt of all Presidents was Ulysses S. 
Grant. He was merely the tool of the men who had 
made fortunes in the Civil War. He did whatever the 
Drcxels asked him to do, and Belknap with the Star 
Route Ring wrecked him historically. He admitted 
"borrowing" of the Drexels on his own account while 
President at one time $150,000. But the G. A. R. still 



170 

calls him "a great President." He had been a "great" 
General with five times as many soldiers as Robert E. 
Lee. That is, he had great armies. 

Hayes was no tool. He was rich enough to do what 
he pleased. He never talked with any one without hav- 
ing a shorthand writer on hand keeping notes. No man 
could see him quietly alone. 

Garfield died soon after his election. 

Arthur was a pleasure-loving gentleman, who did 
what the New York politicians asked. 

Cleveland was a terror in the Whte House, He 
went in for Civil Service reform. He was a powerful 
man who worked harder than any other President be 
fore him except Washington and Lincoln. He did take 
advice, perhaps too much, but he was not subservient. 
He believed in gold as the only money and revived the 
Jackson traditions. 

Only great bankers now have gold ; what will Hai-d 
ing do about this? Jackson broke the United States 
Bank because it also believed in having "real money" 
only for the rich. 

Benjamin Harrison came in between the two terms 
of Cleveland, who had a majority of the popular votes, 
however, in all three elections. He added six Republi- 
can States to the Union out of the territories in order 
to control the Senate in Congress. He was the rich 
man's President, But he was also a great lawyer. 

The modern time in American history began with 
McKinley and world expansion. 

In order to understand it, we need to consider what, 
in the light of the present, has been the most import- 
ant American public question, and what the other great 
issues have been. 

By far the greatest question has been, of course, 
how to realize democracy, how to give, as Lincoln put 
it, "to ev(!]'y man the equal chance." 



171 

Who have stood for this? 
Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Roosevelt. 
Who have been the agents of the aristocrats? 
Conspicuously, Polk, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, 
Grant, McKinley, Taft. 

That is the one first and main issue. 
Where will Harding stand ? 

The second great question has been how to bring 
prosperity to the land, how to make Americans gen- 
erally happy. 

The leaders in this movement have been 
Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, 
McKinley, Roosevelt, Wilson. 
The men who have stood not for the the general 
prosperity but for the power of the great and rich 
and well-born, have been 

John Adams, Monroe, Tyler, Polk, Fillmore. 
Pierce, Buchanan, Grant, Taft. 
The third question has been how to expand our 
lands. 

The leaders in this have been 
Washington, who tried to get Canada to come 
in; Jefferson, Madison, Polk, Taylor, Lincoln, 
Johnson, Grant, B. Harrison, McKinley, 
Roosevelt. 

The opponents of this have been, curiously enough, 
Lincoln, v/ho opposed taking Mexican sessions, and 
Cleveland; and outside of the Presidency, two very 
great men, Hamilton and Webster. 

The fourth question has been whether to go abroad 
and get International power. 

The leaders in Internationalism have been 
Jefferson, both Adams, Monroe, Polk, Tay- 
lor, Buchanan, Lincoln, Grant, B. Harrison. 
McKinley, Taft, and by far the greatest of 
them all, Wilson. 



172 

The opponents have been 

Washington, Hayes and Cleveland. 

The fifth question has been that of honest gold 
money instead of mere paper currency. 

The leaders of this have been 

Washington, Jackson, Van Buren, Hayes, 
Cleveland. 

Those who have sinned against the pocketbooks of 
the common man (who is no banker) have been Lin- 
coln, Grant and Wilson. 

Here let us record the names of three great states- 
men who have cared to keep America gold honest — 
Alexander Hamilton, Albert Gallatin and John Sher- 
man. 

A sixth question has been how to raise money for 
the National Government and whether in doing so to 
have a protective tariff. 

Before the Civil War, the protective tariff was 
relatively unimportant, because the Government spent 
but little money. The only man who cared much 
about it and who became President was John Quincy 
Adams. All taxes were low. 

Since that time, the j^dvocates of a strong pro- 
tective tariff have been Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Gar- 
field, B. Harrison, McKinley, Taft. 

The opponents have been Cleveland and Wilson. 

The question of an income tax was never import- 
ant until very recently when much more money was 
demanded. 

Wilson advocated this, and McKinley and Taft 
were against it. 

No President has ever favored prohibtion of the 
liquor traffic. Wilson and Harding are both "wets." 

Another tremendous question now looms before us, 
and the question where Harding stands will have to 
be answered by him at once. What about paying the 



173 

present National debt; is it to be a burden upon our 
children's children forever like the British consols and 
a means for establishing and mantaining a moneyed 
aristicracy? There are individual men who own each 
more than one million of these more than twenty bil- 
lions of dollars of National debts. 

The Victory Loan, the fifth war issue, comes due 
in April, 1923. Does Warren Harding intend to repay 
it or to refund it, and if so, at what rate of interest ? 

The amount is about $2,225,000,000. 

To own one million dollars of this debt means to 
have an income of $47,500 a year from the taxes and 
toil of the American people. 

Of course, long ago, the Constitution of the United 
States ceased to be anything more than a fetich, for 
the Supreme Court has become a perpetual constitu- 
tional convention deciding as it will what accords under 
the new conditions wth the old letter and the old 
spirit and what does not. Abraham Lincoln and the 
"implied war powers" ended all the old philosophical 
liberals; the latter won out of hand. When Theodore 
Roosevelt made his immortal speech in Kansas on "the 
new nationalism," he but put the seal of his states- 
manship upon the matter. Strict construction in a 
work of international trade, of wireless telegraphy, of 
great newspapers is impossible. It means that, except 
for wars, money postoffice, and a few such matters, 
each State could and should go it alone. 

That is now undesirable, of course. Still, there 
are echoes of the thing. There are atill citizens who 
who do not believe that because it is unsafe to put 
liquor in the South and in such negro States as Ohio, 
Indiana and Illinois, it is therefore also wicked to allow 
the people of Massachusetts and of California to have 
wine at their meals or beer. 

The foodless saloon always was a crime. But that 



174 

does not make the farmer who has cider criminal 
morally. 

Strict construction would have made the discus- 
sion of uniform divorce laws and a national statute 
on the subject a real issue. It would have allowed 
the various States to make experiments in many lines 
in order to find what legislation is really best for the 
American people in each part of the country and in 
each epoch of development. 

What will Warren Harding make of the problem 
of the construing of the Constitution? He has never 
studied Latin, nor law, nor jurisprudence, nor 
economics, nor anything above a rural school course in 
a back country district plus some pedagogy in order 
to teach in rural schools; and there is no evidence 
whatever that he did teach even one day. 

There is a myth that one of the greatest of Presi- 
dents, Abraham Lincoln, "knew nothing." This is a 
vicious lie ; for he studed the entre high school course 
in Springfield, 111., under the veteran high school prin- 
cipal evenings for four years, and he was also one of 
the best lawyers in Illinois. To compare Harding with 
Lincoln is deliberate endeavor to fool the American 
people. 

The Nation now has $6,250,000,000 of currency out 
in circulation, of which over $3,000,000»000 is new cur- 
rency compared with a total of but $2,250,000,000 
nearly all gold and silver in 1913. 

This means that the bankers have a vast amount of 
currency without gold backing that they lend to the 
people at six and seven per cent, and costs them on]\' 
the government charge for printing. It is a scandal. 
What does Harding intend to do about ths ? 

It should be slowly but steadily retired within not 
over ten years. What will be his policy? Does he 



175 

think that the more paper currency a Nation has the 
richer it is? 

Ask the Russians who now have $65,000,000,000 
in eirculaton, yet are in desperate poverty. Paper cur- 
rency impoverishes any nation. 

We may now return to McKinley and to the begin- 
nings of modem times in the United States. With him. 
America expanded into and across the Pacific and into 
the West Indies. A great President faces all the major 
questions of his times with full front. 

The greatest question of the times for McKinley 
was whether or not to help Cuba and the Philippines 
to go free from Spain; he answered affirmatively; in 
the main, because men like Roosevelt were ready to 
act under him. He did a statesmanlike thing then. 

The worst fault of McKinley was that he filled 
every office at the dictation of Mark Hanna, and that 
only toward the end of his life did he see our world re- 
lations as unfortunately influenced by a too high tariff. 
But we have had poorer and weaker Presidents. Mc- 
Kinley grades well with the whole list. He was a good 
lawyer; an excellent public speaker; not afraid to 
stand upon a platform without notes and tell his story. 

To equal him Warren needs to study law five or 
ten years. This is the first but not the only require- 
ment. It would be wise for him also to pick out a 
Regent with the abilities of Mark Hanna. 

Roosevelt undertook more things than any other 
Pi-esident save Wilson. He taught the plutocrats that 
the Government OF the people belongs TO the people, 
not to the plutocracy. He did a hundred other great 
things. He had a p0l3npha.se mind ; he was a hunter of 
game, big and small; a historian and naturalist and 
essayist ; a world traveller, a loud, if not very effective, 
public speaker; though easily in the second rank, far 
superior to Harding ; a thorough business man who left 



176 

the largest estate of all the Presidents by far; the 
father of many children and grandfather of many 
more ; with a very admirable record as a man in all his 
dealings with women. 

Warren Harding in his seat is morally a crime. 
What will he do about the conservation of natural re- 
sources which Roosevelt began? Warren Harding 
plays golf ; T. R. did not play golf ; he was no old man. 
He rode horseback; he played tennis; he walked and 
swam streams, when they got in his way; he went 
camping and delighted in the storms that drove Warren 
out of Point Isabel because they were "too severe." 
Roosevelt did not know what bad weather was. 

Roosevelt read books; old books, new books, hun- 
dreds every month. What books has Warren Harding 
ever read? Roosevelt did not play poker all night. 

But Roosevelt was a poor judge of men, being too 
generous in respect to them. He selected Taft for the 
Presidency and it was a very bad blunder for him- 
self. Taft was a very good executive when he had 
a right-minded man to tell him what to execute. Taft 
is of the judicial temperament, and he has too many 
rich relatives, though honest and poor himself. 

Even Taft, however, being a first-class lawyer, is a 
head, shoulders, trunk, limbs to the knees, higher than 
Warren Harding; but has he sold out to him in order 
to become Chief Justice? Did he sell out the League 
to Enforce Peace? He organized this and was Presi- 
dent of it. If he has done so, and it looks like it very 
much, for the League to Enforce Peace is dead, then 
he classes with the most despised history. 

The accusations made against Woodrow Wilson by 
the plutocrats who have captured, piratically, the ma- 
chinery of the once good Republican party, are these, 
viz.: 

1. He went it alone; he consulted none. 



177 

2. He got very rich through the war. 

3. He is morally vile and always has been. 

4. He lives remote and above the rest of us, an 
isolated hermit of a man. 

5. He is only a professor, a bookman, a scholar. 

6. He wrote too much, he sent too many letters to 
Germany. 

7. He cares too much for the peace of the world; 
and is willing to sacrifice the interests of America to 
the good of humanity. 

8. He bossed the peace conference, and made the 
Allies do just what he wished. 

9. He spent too much time in gayeties in Paris, 
and was too much flattered by the common people. 

10. He has been too much under the influence of 
women, especially his two wives, and the wives of 
other men. 

11. He is sickly by nature. 

12. He has done too many things to do them all 
well. 

13. He is pro-British and anti-German. 

14. He was flimflammed by Clemenceau and the 
rest. 

Such has been the program of ruin that the plu- 
tocrats accomplished. It sounds like just what it is, 
bedlam. It sounds like a reflex of the minds of Warren 
and the Duchess. 

This book is not a defence of Thomas Woodrow 
Wilson, Presbyterian elder, and once President of 
Princeton University. Time will judge him. Time will 
show him as one of the world's great thinkers. 

But there is required a mere statement of the truth. 

So far fiom going it alone in the Peace Conference, 
he was attended by more than a hundred experts and 
by many clerks; he had made the most elaborate 
preparation of all the statesmen present. 



]78 

It is silly for men to write books and articles try- 
ing to show that Woodrow Wilson did not avail himself 
of ALL THE INFORMATION that a man who lives on 
24 hours a day like the rest COULD GET as he moved 
along. Many a night he had almost no sleep for month 
on month. He was in conference or preparing notes 
for conferences and committees. For shameless paid 
mercenary mendacity the work of such men as Judson 
C. Welliver, who became head of the publicity work of 
the Republican National Committee after serving as 
critic for them in Europe, passes the dreams of 
Munchaisen and Machiavelli. He did this for money. 
As for Robert Lansing, what he has revealed is that 
he is a sorehead and that Wilson saw how incompe- 
tent he was. The same is true of the Englishman, 
Keynes, whose ax Wilson would not grind for him. An- 
drew Tardieu has exposed all this lying in his book on 
the Treaty. 

If he got very rich through the war, where is his 
wealth? His second wife, the widow of the jeweler, 
Norman Gait, of Washington was a woman of wealth 
before he married her. There is not the slightest evi- 
dence that even with the savings of a salary of $75,000 
a year, Woodrow Wilson and his wife together are 
worth even a million dollars, and of this total the Gait 
estate accounts for nearly all. Norman Gait died child- 
less and left all to his widow. The Republicans, as we 
saw in the account of the campaign itself, instructed 
their paid agents provocateurs to say that Mrs. Wilson 
was worth twenty million dollars and Woodrow him- 
self as much more. Where is this forty millon dollars 
hidden ? It would take the brain of a mestizo to trump 
up such a story. Or, possibly, Will Hays invented it 
He was Chairman of the Committee that hired these 
agents to lie. 

Forty million dollars represents the total wealth of 



179 

the ordinary city of 20,000 people. Or all the farms 
of a county with a farming population of as many. 
Who paid this to Wilson? Is it in his vest pocket? 
No, indeed, but the lie is charged up against Welliver, 
Scott C. Bone and Will Hays on the Book of the Day of 
Judgment. 

Wilson is a Presbyterian elder. So is Hays. If 
Wilson is morally vile, why does not Hays undertake 
to have him removed from his eldership ? The proposi- 
tion that a university president in America can be 
morally vile is itself detestable, Warren, who never 
went to college, may believe this ; but no college gradu- 
ate will. 

There is, of course, a cult in America that tries to 
make out that Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Ann Arbor 
and all other universities are abominations. This cult 
is a curse to the land. Those foul parrots say that 
Mrs. Wilson I. died because Woodrow Wilson was un- 
faithful to her. If so, why did her death cause him to 
be so ill for months that he contemplated resigning the 
Presidency? Why did not his grown daughters re- 
pudiate him? Why did his wife's family immediately 
publish contradictions of all the stories of inharmony ? 
Why is Professor Anson, of Texas, still one of Wilson's 
closest friends, being his first wife's brother? No, 
these .stories were all hatched in the disgusting experi- 
ences of such people as Mrs. Warren and her paramour, 
and duly proven in her divorce from De Wolfe in court. 

If Woodrow Wilson lives remote from the rest of 
us, how would these Republicans wish him to live? In 
an apartment house or in a tenement in some slum? 
They charge in the next breath that he frequented the 
vile places of Paris. If he went alone, remote and aloof, 
how do they know it at all ? 

It is quite true that he is now a cripple for life 
from a form of paralysis. Does no decent man ever 



180 

have a stroke of paralysis? He got this while on a 
speaking trip among American people, believing that 
he must come into close contact with the millions. He 
was driven to do this by the hideous flood of calumnies 
set on by the Republicans, whose names will be forever 
anathema maranatha to decent posterity. We mean 
Lodge, Penrose, Harding, Knox, Smoot, the Mormon, 
and all their like. 

If Woodrow Wilson had been "only a professor," 
the Republicans would never have feared him. A 
"professor" is a kind of Ichabod Crane, a ridiculous 
person who, because he can do nothing, teaches how 
to do it; so they say. 

The letters sent by Woodrow Wilson did more dam- 
age to the German cause than whole mountain piles of 
bombs; they broke the morale of the German people, 
and made them doubt their rulers who were qui^e as 
abominable as the Republican plutocrats. They t roke 
the support behind the lines, which is more mpoitant 
than the lines themselves. 

The peace of the world is the peace of America; 
when the world will not fight because it hates war, 
then my son and your son will not have to fight. 

He did boss the Peace Conference; and the Repub- 
licans are now trying to unscramble the eggs, as J. P. 
Morgan put it. The Covenant is the whole of the Peace ; 
without it, the Peace is but temporary. 

Woodrow Wilson spent no time in the gayeties of 
Paris, because there were no gayeties. All that is mere 
pro-German talk. France lost a million dead and two 
million more wounded in a population of but fifteen 
million adult men. Of course, to save tme, the diplo- 
mats did eat together. 

It is quite true that Wilson has been much under 
the influence of good women, his mother, his first and 
second wives. But for his second wife, who has nursed 



181 

him faithfully and attended to much business for him, 
he would have been dead by now, and a great man dead 
is a statesman, of course; then Henry Cabot Lodge 
could have delivered a funeral oration grandiloquently. 

If being influenced by good women is a crime, let 
us have more of these crimes. All these Mrs. Wilsons, 
all three, were very smart women, it so happens, espe- 
cially the last. When a man is loved by very smart 
women, who have the right to do so, is that a sign of 
incompetence ? 

As to his being sickly by nature, perhaps. So was 
Roosevelt as a boy. In college Wilson was the best 
boxer among the thousad men; Princeton has men 
students only. After he came out of college he was 
the football coach for two years. Physically, he bears 
a very close resemblance to the ex-champion, Willard. 
He is tall and very strong muscularly. 

It is true that at the end of the Presidency, he broke 
down in health. 

So did Theodore Roosevelt at the end of his seven 
years. 

Polk survived but one month. 

The average expectation of life for the man who 
leaves the Presidency after two terms is fourteen 
years; the actual realized average is seven years. 

The Presidency of the United States is the biggest 
job i»^ '■!* world. 

lae giant Washington lived but three years after 
leavini? the Presidency and died at an age not much 
greater than that of Wilson now. He was very ill 
while President for more than a year. 

Taylor died from the work while in office ; so did 
William Henry Harrison. The record is really far worse 
than the statistics sound. We have had but two men 
survive two consecutive terms of office since the Civil 
War, Grant and Roosevelt. Each lived about ten years. 



182 

Each was a young man when he finished, for these two 
were the youngest of all the Presidents. Grant was 
but fifty-three at the end of his two terms and Roose- 
velt but fifty-one. Cleveland had two terms, but not 
consecutive; he also survived about ten years. The 
surgeons said that McKinley died when he was shot be- 
cause his health had been broken by his toils of office. 
His constitution had no vital reserves. 

All this, of course will be made use of by Repub- 
licans v/ho will argue that now that Harding is in 
office, we should praise him with the loot. McKinley 
did not lie himself into office. On this argument, the 
burglar and murderer would always be safe. Mrs. 
Harding already complains of unpleasant stories. Why 
dd she use such against a good woman, the real First 
Lady, Mrs. Wilson? 

No doubt that Wilson had done too many things to 
do them all well. So has every other great man. 

As for his being pro-British and anti-German, what 
should he have been? Neutral, while our boys were 
being shot down? Gassed? Starved in prison camps? 

At a Jackson Day banquet in Ohio, Professor Wil- 
liam Estabrook Chancellor, the white historian, and 
not the black neighbor of Warren Harding, made a 
speech, which is reported to us as follows, viz.: 

"Ladies and Gentlemen: We have heard much as 
to the causes w^hy the Democrats were beaten by the 
Republicans in the last election. But in one aspect of 
the situation I rejoice. The Republicans lied about the 
situation and about the men. They bribed many. They 
terrorized the women by telling them that the League 
meant war. They predicted that our factories would 
close down because the Republican capitalists would 
not use their funds if Cox should be elected. They 
appealed to every mother and wife whose man had 
])een drafted. They appealed to the farmers who de- 



188 

sired a better price for their wheat and wool. They 
told the postal clerks that Burleson was a Democrat 
and their enemy. They organized the negroes by say- 
ing that if the Democrats had their way, they would 
disfranchise them. They told the League advocates 
that Warren was a pro-I^aguer. They told the anti- 
Leaguers that Warren was for America only first, last 
and all the time. They told the big capitalists that 
they would reduce the income tax. They told the rail- 
roaders that they would raise their wages. They tore 
out of the Democratic party every man and woman 
whom fear, self-interest, greed, "patriotism," fasely 
so-called ; pride of country, any and every class interest 
could reach. They told the ministers that all the lead- 
ing Democrats were on the straight road to hell. We 
have left a period when Woodrow Wilson was holding 
high ideals of a world of peace and righteousness and 
humanity and world brotherhood before us into a 
period that reminds me of Jerusalem and the Dead 
Sea. There is a story that no living creature can 
cross that Sea. Its waters are pestilential ; its heat is 
terrific; its ordors cut the lungs. But I for one re- 
joice that I belong to the irreducible minimum of the 
Democrats who could not be bribed, terrorized, seduced, 
misled to the shoi-es of that Sea down, down, down to 
its abyss twelve hundred feet below the decent levels 
of Old Ocean and more than a half mile below the 
Holy City. Nevertheless, as I stand with you upon the 
high hills of Mount Zion, I watch with interest the 
flight across the Dead Sea of one Black Crow." 

The achievements of Wilson during his eight years 
read like romance. 

He led an army of two millions across the Atlantic 
and organized a reserve of two millions more, the best 
equipped army in the history of the world, and next to 



184 

the largest, the only larger army being that of Ger- 
many itself. 

He secured within a few years $32,000,000,000 of 
funds for the war, by far the great supply of currency 
and bonds that the world ever saw. 

The percentage of graft in the spending of this 
money was so small as to be negligible. Many of the 
men who spent money were Republicans. He used men 
from both parties freely, too freely when their in- 
gratitude to him is considered. 

Pershing is a Republcian, and has a father-in-law 
worth twenty-five million dollars, a United States sen- 
jitor from Wyoming. He commanded the troops. On 
the ocean, Admiral Sims is a Republican. Benedict 
Crowell, who was the head of army purchases, was a 
Republican. Gates who headed supplies in Europe was 
a Republican. Hoover was a Republican, and so was 
Garfield. Yet all the errors of the war are charged 
to Wilson and the Democrats. 

Nevertheless, Wilson was the head of the Govern- 
ment, and Wilson won the war so far as America ever 
did win the war. 

He organized the Federal Reserve Banking System 
that has taken the money power from Wall Street and 
distributed it in twelve regional cities. 

He began the Farm Loan System. 

He made prohibition effective, though opposed to 
it on principle. 

He worked hard for and helped woman suffrage 
win. 

He put across the income and excess profits taxes 
that made the rich bear the heavier burdens, as they 
can. Thereby he relieved the poor. 

His worst mistake was in permitting the inflation 
of the currency with paper. 

It has been said that he blundered when he asked 



185 

the American people to elect Democrats to Congress. 
What has the history of the past two years proven? 
What is the present opinion of America about Truman 
H. Newberry, of Michigan, a Republican? His vote 
defeated the Peace. 

Wilson obeyed no man, and he made the Presidency 
powerful. 

The Constitution in Article II says that "The 
Executive power shall be vested in a President of the 
United States." Where do we wish the power vested? 
In a Regency to be managed by Mrs. Warren Harding, 
the Duchess ; H. M. Daugherty, and Boies Penrose? Or 
do we v/ish to have the Senate run the country? 

The Presidents look like this: USED ALL THE 
POWERS OF OFFICE WELL: Washington, Jefferson, 
Jackson, Lincoln, Cleveland, Roosevelt, and Wilson. 
BADLY: Polk and Grant. 

Very few others, possibly Madison and McKinley, 
will even be mentioned in the histories of five thousand 
years from now except by mere name to fill the list. 

Where is Warren Harding headed? For the same 
oblivion as the rest? He has already pledged himself 
not to act precipitately. This means not to act with- 
out finding out what the big men desire. That is what 
every negro butler instinctively does; he wishes to 
have his master decide for him. 

No President has ever resigned and no negro ever 
commits suicide; we tried to mpeach one man but 
failed. Reform is possible. Most Presidents steadily 
grow less and less popular; what will be the fate of 
Harding? 

J. Adams, J. Q. Adams, Van Buren, Pierce, Polk, 
Buchi^nan, Hayes, who was not elected properly though 
he got the legal papers ; B. Harrison, Taft, each served 
one term. What is to be the case with this man who 



186 . . , . . 

went in by the methods of an election made to order 
for him by the looters of America? 

The Peace Treaty will gradually fade out from the 
views of man, as nations and world conditions change; 
but the League of Nations, with already forty-two 
actual members, will never die out. Clemenceau and 
Sonnino and Lloyd George may have controlled the 
terms of the peace, but Woodrow Wilson laid down 
the railroad tracks into the far remote future of the 
human race. This part of their work will be forgotten 
like all peace treaties, but the League will no more be 
forgotten than will the Code of Justinian, Magna 
Charta and the American Federal Constitution, the 
ground-work of all modern democracies. In the storm 
of present day politics, Wilson at home was apparently 
beaten — on the theory that Cox was "his man," but 
in the long run of humanity across the ocean of Time, 
Wilson will be remembered as the man who charted 
the course. So far from being beaten at Versailles, 
he won. 

Wilson stood for these things, each eternally right, 
viz.: 

1. The principle of self-determination for all peo- 
ples, which means the right of little nationalities 
against great empires, the conformity of boundary lines 
with race and other natural delimitations. 

2. The necessity of machinery and organization to 
bring the nations of the world into parliament with one 
another, and thereby to establish a confederation of 
mankind. 

3. The paramount wickedness of war — to avoid, 
which is the first business of mankind. 

On this subject we have found two pieces of verse 
by William Estabrook Chancellor, which we reprint 
here: 



187 
The League is Dead. Long Live the League 

They said, "His day is done, and all he sought 

Forever into vanity has passed." 
Lo, History to her verdicts comes not fast ! 

The troubled people oft for a time are caught 
In snares that crafty men have wrought. 

The clock ticks on, and only right ways last. 
He set mankind upon a program vast. 

What others dreamed, he shaped, and for it fought. 
Was he defeated? The battle comes and goes. 

Empires and nations in the chains of peace 
He helped to harness. Though him we failed. 

His plan is fact, which shall dissolve our woes. 
Inveterate thinker, thou shalt give surcease 

From care, and men will say, "His soul prevailed." 



CHAPTER XIII 
HAMON AND HARDING 

The relation of the now world-known Hamon mur- 
der case to the Harding candidacy is orally familiar to 
most intelligent Americans ; the story is told here with 
much brevity, though in itself the most interesting 
phase of the whole political history of the Presidential 
campaign of 1920. It so happened that the mere fact 
that Professor Chancellor, through his many news- 
paper acquaintances and friends, was thoroughly in- 
formed about the Hamon phase was a potent cause, 
perhaps the most potent cause, of his being encouraged 
to get out of the reach of the Republican plutocrats 
for a time. 

Jake Hamon was about forty-five years old at the 
time of his murder by Clara Smith, who was acquitted 
for reasons and from causes of the most exciting 
nature. As the people of Ardmore and Rankin and 
Oklahoma City, where Hamon was best known, put it 
to Professor Chancellor, when he surveyed the field: 
"Someone had to kill Jake; perhaps it was best Clara 
do it." 

Jake was a big-bodied man some five feet nine 
inches tall, claimed German and Indian blood, and had 
an indescribable complexion, like the Mississippi in a 
freshet at sunset. He may have had Spanish or 
Portuguese blood. According to the business standards 
and practices of Oklahoma and the Oil country, he 
was an exceedingly able business man. At any rate, 
being on the ground floor from the start, he made and 
lost millions, and died with an estate and reported in 

138 



189 

the newspapers after appraised at $5,000,000 assets, to 
$1,800,000. Public opinion credits him with having 
conveyed, in trust, at least ten millions in assets to 
others, as anchors to the windward in the event of a 
smash-up of various speculative enterprises ; but public 
opinion may be totally wrong. At the worst, he died 
worth three millions and more. 

Ten years ago, he already had a wife and children 
in Kansas, the wife being Georgia Harding, cousin of 
Warren G. Harding, then a politician of Ohio. She was 
colored like himself and made no claims to being any- 
thing else. They lived in a world of all races and of all 
mixtures of all races, Chinese included, and Mexican. 
Color was nothing — a joke. 

But Jake had the traits of his primitive people ; one 
trait being that he was a born polygamist and woman- 
chaser. Already among other women he had taken 
Clara Smith. This was as deliberate on her part as 
his ; he saw her in a store tending a customer, followed 
her up took her to his office, and made a deal with 
her to educate her as his private secretary for the 
usual consideration exacted by loose grls. She was 
then eghteen and understood what the affair was. He 
sent her to a private school in Lawrence, Kansas, and 
while she was still in that school learning English 
and shorthand, sent for her often to see him in Topeka, 
for purposes easily surmised. 

Clara was a brunette and slight in person, and has 
negro blood. She used rouge and cosmetics and got 
herself up regardless of expense. Jake was "making a 
million" a year and often that much a month. 

Among all the women Jake fancied, Clara developed 
most ability. 

When not drunk, Jake was not only amiable, but 
even agreeable and polite. He was seldom more than 
a quarter drunk. "He could stand as much likker as 



i90 

any man in Oklahoma," was the way the men on the 
street put it. But occasionally he did get very drunk; 
then he was a demon, all-furious Indian. Then Clara 
was the only one who could even partially tame him. 
Such sprees lasted usually several days. 

They drove over the praries and planes together, 
looking up petroleum and refineries and pipelines and 
railroads and markets. They occupied adjoining rooms 
in hotels, or when hotels were crowded, the same room. 
At last some of the rich eastern operators who were 
using Hamon to stalk yet bigger pi'ey objected, and 
for appearances sake Jake married Clara off to a 
worthless nephew whom he prevented from ever see- 
ing her alone. After that they traveled as uncle and 
niece, a very raw proposition, but in a very raw land. 

Occasionally Jake visited his legal wife with the re- 
sult that she bore one more child to him. Clara had 
no children. Mrs. Georgia at last agreed to accept a 
fine apartment and plenty of money and to live in 
Chicago without her man. 

Jake L. Hamon built the city of Rankin. He helped 
make the city of Ardmore. He was a power. He even 
went in for Boy Scouts and Y. M. C. A.'s. He was a 
spender and a mixer. When people complained about 
his morals — for he had women friends besides Clara, 
stationed at various points, though Clara was the head 
of the harem — men said, "Oh, it's Jake's way; we can 
not change him." They ate together in hotels; they 
even went together to the homes of friends. Every 
one knew the situation. Jake gave to Clara the finest 
of motor cais and of clothes. She worked hard for 
him when with him, writing his telegrams and letters 
and mending his clothes. She developed an expert 
knowledge of oil and oil men. 

Then came the amazing news to Georgia Harding 
that her cousin was going to try to become President. 



101 

Jake also heard of it. They had never broken with one 
another; they met and talked over what they could do. 
Then thej- went to Ohio to see Warren. Both of them 
knew him, of course. Warren sent them to H. M. 
Daugherty, who said that what he most needed was 
money. Jake said he had enough. We have been un- 
able to get all the details of what was actually given by 
Jake to Warren Harding's nomination campaign and 
later spent by him for the election, naturally. Jake 
did not much care; he had enough to see it through. 

But the common report is that H. M. Daugherty 
got in all for the nomination campaign in Ohio two 
hundred thousand dollars, and won most of the dele- 
gates with this money. He admitted spending one 
hundred thousand dollars. 

There was a hot fight for the Oklahoma delega- 
tion. Jake won the State Committee Chairmanship at 
a cost of forty-six thousand dollars. But Lowden got 
the instruction to the delegates to support him for the 
nomination. 

Meantime, Daugherty had opened offices for Hard- 
ing in Chicago, with more of Jake's money. It is be- 
lieved that the direct office expenses were seventy- 
eight thousand dollars. 

Then came the Convention. P^or a money considera- 
tion, the Oklahoma delegation, after a few ballots, 
abandoned Lowden for Harding; this is said to have 
cost in all directly another $50,000,00. Other delega- 
tions were bought ; other Harding votes were secured ; 
and of the total how much came from Jake is un- 
knouTi, The total was something like $300,000.00. 
It was not a convention of "cheap skates." Some dele- 
gates went home with net profits of $25,000.00, 

Jake went into the campaign with the definite 
promise of being made Secretary of the Interior in the 



192 

event that Harding won. With this power American 
Oil would win Mexico. 

In all, Hamon spent from $900,000 to $1,500,000. 
We give the two extremes of the Oklahoma estimates. 
There are three living persons who know how much 
Hamon spent — H. M. Daugherty, Clara Smith Hamon, 
now in the vaudeville field, and Ketchum, the manager 
of the Hamon estate. This raises the question of the 
debts of $1,800,000.00. It appears that Hamon bor- 
rowed from Standard Oil Banks and companies all the 
monies he spent with the understanding that when he 
got to be Secretary of the Interior and opened up 
Mexico to the Standard Oil Interests, the notes were to 
be charged over to profit and loss. On this claim, 
since by being killed, he was unable to become Secre- 
tary of the Interior, the Hamon estate is trying to get 
the notes cancelled for the benefit of Georgia Harding 
Hamon and her three children. 

Harding did win, and Harding went out to Okla- 
homa to see his cousins. Already, the word had reached 
himself and the Duchess that Hamon had an inamorata 
who might be in the way in Washington ; they desired 
Georgia to get the limelight, not Clara. Eastern 
women disfavor the Clara Smiths of the oil country. 

Hamon had for his cousins a fine banquet at Okla- 
homa City, and at this affair Mrs. Warren Gamaliel 
Harding put her right hand upon the shoulder of the 
oil king and called him "Our dear Jake," and told the 
people how grateful she was for the terribly hard work 
he had done to win Oklahoma. 

They took Jake, but not Clara, down to Point Isabel, 
Texas. There was a big storm down there but the ex- 
ternal storm was not so great as the one inside the 
fishing camp, where Senators Fall, Hale and Freling- 
hysen told Jake Hamon to go back and clean house, 
while Warren and Florence Harding sat sadly by and 



193 

watched Jake's Torment, for, as we shall see, Jake 
loved his tall, lithe, clever, attractive quadroon woman. 
But he wished to make a very great fortune, and he 
wished the honor of being in the Cabinet. Really, he 
thought, ''Where do they get that stuff? What is the 
matter? Ain't Clara satisfied?" 

But he went back home, first, to Rankin and told 
the city officials to send all the "Dames" and "Skirts 
sky-hooting," which they did. Then he went down to 
Ardmore and he saw Clara and he told her. All that 
she asked was this: "Her clothes and motor cars and 
jewelry and $1500.00 cash to begin again." 

This made him think that Clara did not love him, 
and he went out and took several drinks. When he 
came back he was somewhat drunk. He went to Clara's 
room and expostulated with her. But she only sent 
him away again. Then he took some more drinks. 
By this time anger at her and desire for her had got- 
ten the better of his temper, and he started to whip 
her. She resisted. Then he hit her again; and she 
took up a little pearl-handled revolver and pointed it 
at him. He seized a chair and rased it. Clara swung, 
like a cat, behind him, and "plugged" him one. It en- 
tered his back behind his liver and he ran out into the 
hallway and into another room. Clara rushed after 
him, and put her arms around him; but others who 
had heard the shot came in, and he said to them: 
"Well, the girl has got the old man at last." 

A few days later Jake died. 

All this might have come out at the trial, but the 
Standard Oil Company said "NO." 

Only that part was allowed in the record which ex- 
plained why Clara had the revolver. And how she shot 
him. And what he said. 

The jury had no desire to hang a woman or even 
put her away for life; also she might run around and 



tell all she knew. Therefore, they made her and her 
parents comfortable by acquitting her on the ground 
of self-defense. 

She is now at large and she may tell her story. 
This is the story we have told. 

This is no Evelyn Thaw ruined girl story. It is 
merely the brutal outline of the plutocracy and it's tools 
in the raw west. 

And Senator I'all, who did the advising of Hamon, 
will have to answer in the highest court where all men 
have their Great Assize, how he adjusted his own con- 
science to his part in the business. He asked Hamon 
to do something which was virtually suicide. 

Through this dead man's money, or that of the 
Standard Oil men, many of whom are very religious, 
Warren Harding lives in the White House. It is a sick* 
ening fact for decent men to endure. How the White 
House can ever be cleared of the odor of this pertoleum 
is a serious problem for the future of our American 
social order. 

Hamon, bad as he was, was a better man than the 
man whom he placed there in the White House, and he 
played a finer game. 

The American Press all know this story ; but they 
have preferred to let the friends of Professor Chan- 
cellor here and now tell it. 

We dare them to start a war in Mexico, once that 
the public knows this story. 

Will the nerve of the Secretary of the Interior hold 
out? 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE ELECTION MADE TO ORDEB 

In the first place, it is desirable to make clear why 
the Republicans were so tremendously concerned about 
winning the election of 1920. They made an extra- 
ordinary effort, an effort hitherto unequalled in Ameri- 
can political history, and there was a campaign un- 
equalled in its violence of street and countryside gossip 
and final newspaper filth, whence the sluice gates of 
Republican billingsgate were opened upon a man in 
no way responsible for telling that which was charged 
against Harding. 

The Republican campaign really began as soon as 
Woodrow Wilson decided to go to France to represent 
the Republic as he had the full constitutional right to 
g. He was the head of the Government, commander- 
in-chief of the army and navy, head of foreign affairs, 
head of expenditures. First, the Republicans tried 
to show that legally he could not go outside of the 
three-mile limits of our coasts; if he did, the Vice- 
President would automatically succeed him, but it was 
shown that Theodore Roosevelt had gone outside of 
those limits, and this settled that notion. Then in 
succession came arguments that it was unwise to do so, 
unsafe lest the chief be assassinated, undignified, im- 
practicable, monarchical, etc. This line of argument 
showed that the real trouble lay in the desire of the 
Republicans, who, in the election of 1918, had won 
control of Congress, to control the foreign affairs 
through the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs. 

But there was more behind the situation than the 

196 



196 

surface revealed. There were ancient grudges. Wood- 
row Wilson was an interloper upon the national politi- 
cal scene, while some of the Senators had served for 
many years. The Democrats never were good diplo- 
mats ; all the brainy and nice-mannered diplomats were 
Republicans. It was true years and years ago that 
Thomas Jefferson had gotten the Louisiana Territory 
for the Republic, and that Polk had gotten a big slice 
farther southwest; and a few details like that; but in 
general the Republicans were far more competent than 
the Democrats in foreign affairs. Also, they took 
more interest in the commerce and finance of the 
foreign lands than did the Democrats ; they cared more 
about the welfare of the business interests and of the 
business men. 

There was another bunch of ancient grudges. Wood- 
row Wilson was a graduate and former President of 
Princeton University, while Henry Cabot Lodge was 
a graduate of Harvard. It was intolerable, it was even 
unseemly for Princeton to head the diplomatic business 
of the nation when a Harvard man was available in the 
person of Henry Cabot Lodge. Moreover, the Massa- 
chusetts Senator had been the maker and adviser of no 
less than Theodore Roosevelt, greatest of all Ameri- 
cans; he had far more experience than Woodrow Wil- 
son had, and again, Senator Lodge had written many 
histories in competition with Wilson, which histories, 
until Wilson became President, sold decidedly better 
than those of Wilson. Moreover, Lodge came from 
old New England families and had the colonial hatreds 
and distrusts of Europe and especially of England in 
his bones. It would never do to send over Wilson, when 
it was so much better to send over the very distin- 
guished Senators. Again, Lodge was very rich, worth 
millions by inheritance and natural increase, while 
Wilson was worth nothing and had a wife in business, 



197 

a wife who indeed had gone every year to Paris to 
buy jewels and jewelery at wholesale, a business 
woman; it was shocking. She was behind it all. 

The far worst of all, if a Democrat made the Treaty 
of Peace, it would be for FREE TRADE among the 
nations, and that would ruin the rich protected manu- 
facturers of New England and of Pennsylvania. 

But Woodrow Wilson went. 

In 1918, the Republicans had filled the ears of the 
common people and society folks alike with gossip of 
the horrible moral character of the sage from Prince- 
ton, hoping thereby to elect Hughes. But what they 
said in 1916 was nothing to what they now prepared 
to say in 1920. 

As soon as Wilson landed, Judson C. Welliver was 
there also. Then began at once a series of defamatory 
articles of subtle and even open attack upon Wilson 
such as the world has never seen since the days of the 
Roman Empire,. 

It is unnecessary here to repeat the calumnies, for 
they have been told elsewhere in this book. Wilson 
was wholly unfit. The world had gone after another 
false Messiah. 

This stuff was sent home daily to the great Repub- 
lican magazines and nev/spapers. It was talked of in 
the Senate and House, especially in the lobbies. There 
is a saying in Scripture Revelations, last chapters, that 
perfectly fits their case, "They had made and they be- 
lieved their own lies." 

In the meantime at home, they were working out 
several problems, and they were doing the work well. 

They hired agents provocateurs to go about among 
the people at their daily tasks and tell them that Wil- 
son was this, that and what else. They went out among 
the Republicans and told them to organize and save 
the country (?)— Oh, no, SAVE THE GRAND OLD 



198 

REPUBLICAN PARTY. This phrase began by the 
Autumn of 1918 to have the sanctity of a religious con- 
fession — We must save the paiiiy. 

It had split under Taft into two parties, and it had 
been defeated under the leadership, so-called, of 
Charles Evans Hughes. It looked like a dead cock in 
the political pit. 

They went out among the rich and began to raise 
funds through various appeals to restore the business 
men's party. 

They found a cheerful youth who had the air of 
sanctity from being an elder in a Presbyterian countrj^ 
church in Sullivan, Indana, and who had a name that 
suggested the amiable and the easy and the bucolic — 
Will H. Hayes, not William. He knew Indiana politics 
which are not less bad than Illinois politics and almost 
as void of ideas as Ohio politics. This man they made 
Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and 
they gave him money to go around everywhere and 
get the boys together. 

Raise the money. Get the money. Send in the 
money. These were the slogans. Of course, this re- 
iterated suggestion worked. The Americans are an 
impressionable people. 

There was another problem — Whom to nominate? 
The managers did a very clever thing here; they de- 
cided to permit an acrid, vigorous, determined and 
costly lot of pre-convention campaigns in order to 
create the impression that only the Republican nomina- 
tion was worth anything. It would not matter whom 
the Democrats named. 

They had another aspect of this plan. If the cam- 
paigns for nominations cost a lot, the people would 
get used to the notion that the election must cost a lot 
more. 

And there was a third aspect also. The candidates 



199 

would get so tired fighting one another that they 
would all fall in behind the winner, and make it a 
united, harmonious party, because no one had money 
or nerve enough to bolt. 

By the advice of Scott Ferris and of Carter Glass, 
when he went into the Congressional campaign in 
1918, President Wilson made the very great technical 
blunder of asking for a Democratic Congress to sup- 
port him in the Peace dealings. This was very im- 
portant to have, as the event showed, but it was very 
bad politics to say so. 

President Wilson went to Paris and around in 
Europe twice and in all was there about six months. 
He did not spend his entire time as President there, 
as the Republicans tried to make out. Nor did he lay 
aside all domestic business, as they alleged. He was 
attending to the most important governmental proposi- 
tion that the world ever faced — its lasting peace 
through a machine to permit the keeping of peace 
among the nations forever. 

Remember these dates: 

Wilson-Taft-Hughes campaign, 1912. 

Wilson-Hughes campaign, 1916. 

War declared against Germany for cause April, 
1917. 

Armistice and victory, November, 1918. 

Congressional election, November, 1918. 

Wilson in Paris December, 1918, to February, and 
April to June, 1919. 

Wilson stricken on tour, September, 1919. 

Active campaigns for nominations began December, 
1919. 

Republican National Convention, June, 1920. 

Democratic, July. 

Election, November, 1920. 

President Wilson came home from his temfic 



200 

strain in Europe worn out physically, and he found 
tha this personal prestige had been broken by the in- 
famous gossip from the organization headed by 
Welliver, This Welliver became Publicity Director of 
the Republican National Committee. Therefore, Wil- 
son went out among the people from Coast to Coast to 
let them see him, and seeing him, hear his argument. 
It is historically false to say that if he had been a 
stronger man he could have endured anyway. Abra- 
ham Lincoln, as his portraits show, was a broken man 
in April, 1865, when he was assassinated; tradition 
calls him a very strong man. The mighty Washington, 
compelled to endure violent and merciless detraction, 
died but two years after he left the Presidency. Wo 
have discussed this elsewhere. Whatever such crea- 
tures as the aristocratic Lodge, the plutocratic Pen- 
rose, the Mormon millionaire Smoot, and the rest o! 
the group that set about to ruin Wilson, may think re- 
garding themselves, historians will record the truth, 
which is that: 

1. They set power and success above truth and 
right. 

2. They attacked a man morally better than them- 
selves for political purposes only, knowing that they 
were lying and organizing lies. 

3. They set the interests of the Republican poli- 
ticians above the interests of the American people. 

4. And they defeated world peace. 

They have filled up the cup of their iniquities, and 
we have set them in condemnation. 

There were several great campaigns organized for 
the Republican nomination. 

First comes Leonard Wood, Major General of the 
U. S. A., long-time friend and military mentor of Theo- 
dore Roosevelt and Progressive. He advocated 

1. The League of Nations. 



201 

2. Universal military training. 

3. Moderate tariff and world trade. 

He had a fine record as an executive in many- 
capacities. 

He was supported by most of the Eastern Pro- 
gressives, and in particular by Colonel Procter, of Cin- 
cinnati, the soap multi-millionaire and philanthropist. 

Professor William Estabrook Chancellor gave out 
early in the Spring that if Wood did secure the Republi- 
can nomination with a decent Vice-Presidential candi- 
date, he would turn Republican. He did this from per- 
sonal regard for General Wood, his education and an- 
cestry in New England. 

This ends the Republican falsehood that Professor 
Chancellor was a hide-bound partisan Democrat, which 
everyone who knows him, knows is utterly false. 

He is, however, now a party Democrat since his 
treatment by the Republican National Committee and 
present Administration. He believes that the Republi- 
can party has sold out to the plutocracy. 

Second comes Governor Frank A. Lowden, of Il- 
linois. 

He is a lawyer who never practiced much, but who 
married a daughter of the great builder of sleeping 
cars, George M. Pullman, and who has attended to 
the business affairs of the Pullman estate since then, 
a genuine plutocrat of the plutocrats. He is, of course, 
a very industriaus, capable business man, not without 
ability in politics. 

This man represented the standpatism of the Re- 
publican party in the Middle West. He began a great 
campaign. He spent in all some two million dollars, 
which happened to be thirty-three per cent more than 
William Cooper Procter spent for Leonard Wood; but 
unfortunately, being a business man, and not a public 
leader, he did not use the Procter-Wood methods. 



202 - . - - 

Procter went in for publicity for his man; he opened 
headquarters, had an enormous amount of posters 
printed setting forth the excellence of his candidate, 
advertised him in a thousand or more newspapers and 
magazines, sent him on a tour of the entire country 
and bought up no delegates. Lowden did but little pub- 
licity work. Instead, he bought up political bosses 
right and left and delegates galore; he was caught in 
Missouri getting two men for the low price of $2,500 
each, which was absurd. This got into the newspapers, 
and the publicity was damaging. Unfortunately, the 
CHICAGO TRIBUNE was not for Lowden, but for 
Wood, and allowed the information to get wide read- 
ing. Lowden desired what the Republican plutocrats 
all desired, which we have shown elsewhere. 

Then, third, there was Hiram Johnson, who broke 
Hughes in 1920 in California, and who beat Herbert 
Hoover in the Republican primaries out there. 

Johnson is a United States Senator and for a 
time he was Governor of California, with a very fine 
record of performance for the public welfare. He had 
a real program. 

He supported several measures in 1920 in the very 
wide speaking campaign upon which he went. 

1. He favored no I^eague whatever with European 
nations. He was nationalistic in an extreme form. "Let 
America stay at home." 

2. He favored legislation to help the wage-earners. 

3. He looked upon the Non-Partisan league of the 
Dakotas with pleasure; the farmers could trust him 
not to let the grain elevator and railroad men take all 
the profits. 

There were other candidates before the people, but 
these three were the leaders; they had most of the 
delegates. The others included Nicholas Murray But- 
ler, who had been a friend both of Roosevelt and of 



208 

Taft, and is President of the greatest university of 
the country, and Calvin Coolidge, of Massachusetts, 
who had raised against the Boston police the slogan. 
"Law and order!" And among the "others" was 
Warren G. Harding, of Ohio. Few imagined that he 
would win. 

Not trusting at all the amounts given by the vari- 
ous managers, it is still true that relatively the sums 
expended for Butler and Coolidge were negligible ; per- 
haps a hundred thousand dollars each. Why anything 
at all? 

We have told elsewhere how vast was the sum se- 
cretly expended for Warren Harding. Harding had no 
program. He supported nothing. He was "available" 
for any platform whatever. 

Johnson was an orator, a demagogue, perhaps, but 
an orator. Side by side with him was United States 
Senator William E. E. Borah, also an orator. Butler 
was an educator and philosopher, incidentally himself 
rich, a good speaker, a better writer, a political expert 
in New York State. Coolidge was a fair lawyer, a life- 
long officeholder, poor in purse, and no plutocrat. We 
have tried to show elsewhere abundantly what Harding 
really was. 

The real strength of the different men among the 
delegates as among the people was by no means shown 
at any time by the votes cast in the Convention, The 
delegates had been chosen in general in two different 
ways — by old-style state conventions and by new-style 
party primaries. In some cases, the conventions or the 
primaries had instructed the delegates for whom to 
votes in the convention. 

The strength of Wood consisted in the fact that 
most of his delegates actually did believe in him and 
came from States that had instructed them to vote 
for him as nominee. The weakness of Johnson con- 



204 

sisted in the fact that though his delegates were in- 
structed for him, generally they were ready to abandon 
him. Politicians are not generally men who fancy 
Hiram Johnson. 

Lowden was strong at first because his men had 
been bought and paid for, and had to deliver their 
votes accordingly. 

But Daugherty, of Ohio, Avho had most of the Ohio 
votes for Harding, seven only being for Leonard Wood, 
had predicted two weeks previously that "at 2:11 a. m. 
in some hotel room a dozen men sitting together would 
pick the man, and that day the Convention would nomi- 
nate him." What Daugherty predicted, he knew would 
come to pass. 

Let us now take a glance at some things that Pro- 
fessor William Estabrook Chancellor knew already. 
Business took him to Lima, Ohio, early in June. At a 
hotel there, he sat at a table next to the table where 
was seated a party of men whom he knew. One of 
these men was the paid agent of the standpat Re- 
publicans who happens to be president of a small col- 
lege and also of a national association dealing with 
world questions, his name is familiar to many, John 
Wesley Hill. This man, long in the pay of the Re- 
publicans, goes about the country making speeches 
ostensibly for religious ends, but always containing at- 
tacks upon Democratic interests. This Doctor Hill at 
his table arose and in a very loud voice, told the entire 
roomful of men eating, "V/ell, I wish everyone to know 
that we are going to have a safe and sane President 
next time; he is an Ohio man, and his name is Warren 
Harding. I have just seen him; I am on my way to 
the Chicago Convention, which will certainly nomi- 
nate him." 

This was not a banquet ; he said it because he was 
being paid to create sentim.ent for Harding. He won. 



205 

In another chapter we have told where the money 
came from to nominate Harding. 

Professor Chancellor was present at the Chicago 
Convention all day when Harding was nominated. He 
talked with many of the delegates. He saw what hap- 
pened. But not until March of the present year did he 
get the whole inside of the case; what we now tell is 
the substance of what was told to him by Oklahoma oil 
men, members of the Oklahoma delegation, and what 
Professor Chancellor himself saw at the Convention. 

There is nothing in this report that should surprise 
any intelligent man who read the newspapers of the 
time. It explains the inside of what occurred. 

The last day was smeltering hot; after a very hot 
night. 

All night long, in rooms taken by Colonel George R. 
McClellan Harvey, the insiders had been working out 
the plan to land Harding that day. It cost them $50,000 
to turn the Oklahoma delegation from Lowden to whom 
it was pledged to Harding. The runners came in from 
time to time to tell Harding and Harvey and Daugherty 
and the others present how the business of getting the 
delegates was going forward. 

One Republican leader came in at midnight and said 
that he had three questions to ask Hardng before he 
would let his State swing to Harding. Harding asked 
what the questions were. 

First, the man asked, "Have you ever been bank- 
rupt?" 

Second, he asked, "Have you ever had any trouble, 
public trouble, over women?" 

Third, he asked, "We hear that there is a rumor 
among the Johnson men that you have negro blood; 
what about this?" 

To the first queslon, Harding answered a point- 
blank "No." 



206 

He had a long answer to the second, which went 
well enough. 

Daugherty answered the third by saying: "Ohio 
elected Harding United States Senator. Is not that 
enough?" 

The State leader went out and aligned his men for 
Harding; since the election, he has been doing some 
tall swearing. He handled a lot of the Harding money. 

At 8 o'clock a. m., the delegates had already been 
told that on the day they would be able to go home, 
for Harding was "the man.*' 

At noon they were a wretched, gloomy lot, anxious, 
fearing exposure, and many of them really fearing de- 
feat in the Autumn. They have experienced some- 
thing worse than defeat; they have experienced the 
chagrin of discovering that under Harding, they have 
but a shadow for President. 

As soon as the Convention was called to order that 
morning, the colored delegates of whom there v^^ere in 
attendance 176 in all, not counting the alternates, in a 
total of not quite 1,000 delegates, withdrew as usual to 
the sidewalk, leaving their proxies in the hands of the 
chairmen of their State delegations. They were to be 
voted in blocks according to the number of their State 
delegates. This solved the problem for the bosses in 
respect to one-sixth of all the votes, or one-third of 
the number necessary to nominate. No one knows how 
much these colored brothers were paid for their votes 
each except the bribers and the bribed ; but a group of 
told Professor Chancellor that they were anxious to get 
home and spend their money ; and when he asked them 
how much they got, they said their travelling expenses, 
their board bills, their incidentals and their wages. 
None came away emptyhanded. They were serving 
the interests of their common country and ours by 
making a living in politics. They were handled by 



207 

Frank H. Hitchcock, former United States Postmaster 
General, who makes a specialty every four years of fix- 
ing the Southern delegates in the Republican Conven- 
tion. Hitchcock went to Washington to be a Govem- 
ment clerk at $1,600 a year about 1900; and when he 
got through with the Taf t steamroller work in the Re> 
publican Convention of 1912, he was rated in Washing- 
ton at $600,000; he is a bachelor who has found his 
proper work in the field of National politics. South- 
erners and New Englanders traded in negroes for plan- 
tation slaves and for breeding stock; Hitchcock has a 
new wrinkle. He trades in negroes for political slaves 
to use in Republican Conventions. It was with very 
great pleasure that the negroes did vote for Harding, 
because they were told — 

First, that he has negro blood. 

Second, that he would appoint negroes to many 
more offices than any other President has ever done. 

But they were wise enough not to vote for even 
their colored brother until they got the cash for doing 
so. The negro is not in politics for his health. 

No negro ever gets a place as a delegate in a 
Democratic Convention. When the negro race leams 
to split their vote, then Democrats will give some of 
them places in their counsels. But while the race votes 
solid, it can be nothing but a chattel of the party for 
whose candidates the race votes. 

Ballot after ballot was taken. Slowly the strength 
faded away from Butler and Johnson and Lowden to 
Harding, who came through with a small majority in 
sight at the beginning of the eighth ballot. There was 
a swing to Harding, but no stampede. Slowly the votes 
bought were delivered, and the delegates looked sicker 
and sicker. 

To appease their angry consciences, they stam- 
peded to Calvin Coolidge for Vice-President. 



208 

The Wood delegates never abandoned their man. It 
was a question for several days whether the General 
and his followers would not bolt. 

Nicholas Murray Butler advertised the Wood cam- 
paign as one financed by the war munitions manufac- 
turers ; but for this he apologized, bringing out thereby 
the fact that the Wood campaign, wise or unwise, was 
a philanthropic effort of a multi-millionaire to make 
a good man President. Whether Wood decided to re- 
main in the Republican camp because he was already 
promised something or not, only he and a few others 
can tell. But he was soon publicly announced as the 
head of the Philippine-Japanese inquiry and not much 
later the prediction was made that he would become 
the head of the Republican-managed University of 
Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia. Both predictions came 
true. He is now in the Far East on the Government 
business indicated and he has already been elected 
head of that great University, which he will adorn and 
manage, as well as any Republican can manage a uni- 
versity. 

Republicans do not believe in truth and freedom; 
otherwise, they have many good qualities as educators. 

The delegates went home, and going home, they 
expressed many a fear that they were in for a licking. 
But Will H. Hays and Judson C. Welliver and the pluto- 
crats told them not to be afraid ; that victory was cer- 
tain. 

Harding announced his front porch campaign and 
his desire to meet the people at his own home. Then 
began the most deliberate lying of a continued and 
systematic kind that America ever saw in any Presi- 
dential campaign. 

When a train of visitors ran to Marion, it was 
credited with many times the actual number of dele- 
gates. One afternoon a delegation entirely failed to 



209 

show up, but all the papers next day printed the speech 
and told about "the aplause of the great crowd." 

All the Marion tradespeople were coerced into plac- 
ing many pictures of the black face of Warren in their 
windows. The slogan was, "Elect Harding and bring 
business to Maron." 

Doctor George Tryon Harding buttonholed all his 
neighbors and many others, begging them to "Help 
elect my boy." In some instances, Democrats pro- 
tested that the "boy" was a negro, but the old man 
nevertheless persisted in his appeal. 

The banks kept at it; they even sent out letters to 
other banks. Inquiries started regarding the colored 
blood, but the banks in order to "bring business to 
Marion" either ignored the inquiry or denied the truth. 

When the local Democratic newspaper printed 
10,000 copies of the true photograph of George Tryon 
Harding and needed more, the photo original was stolen 
in the office of the rival newspaper to which the 
postcarrier had delivered it by "mistake." When the 
Democratic Postmaster was asked by other postmasters 
and others also as to the truth about Harding, he was 
told if he told the truth and the Republicans won, he 
would lose his job. 

THE STAR got all the Associated Press news on 
time; but the Democratic paper found itself in many 
difficulties, even to spies among its own employes, 
paper upon which to go to press, etc. 

The Republicans set out to prove to America that 
Marion was "all for Harding." 

They promised to Father James M. Dennison, of 
the local Roman Catholic Church the consulate at 
Rome, Italy, for his support; which brought in the 
Catholic vote. 

They threatened the employes of the iron and other 



210 

works in Marion with business depression and no wages 
if the Democrats won. 

They sent men out among the farmers to tell them 
that Wilson was the cause of the low price of their 
wool. 

This is told at the present point in order to show 
how the Republicans succeeded in making all the visi- 
tors feel that Harding would win his home town, and 
therefore was not a negro. 

At this very time, at one and the same time, they 
were sending light-colored negroes to every part of 
Ohio, Indiana and Illinois to tell the colored people that 
Warren was one of themselves. This was preached in 
many churches. 

We may turn from this now to the Democratic 
situation. The doctrine of Fate is an easy one; the 
Democrats are now trying to comfort themselves by 
saying that they never had a chance. What is the 
truth? 

Neither Republicans nor Democrats foresaw that 
Tennessee would confirm the Amendment for equal 
suffrage. If they had foreseen this, neither would 
have dared to nominate the men they did. Not fore- 
seeing the woman vote, the Democrats thought only 
of what the men would say about the candidates. 

There were three leading candidates, and really no 
dark horses anywhere on the horizon or in the woods. 

One was William G. McAdoo, "the Crown Prince." 
He was the son-in-law of Woodrow Wilson, and Wilson 
himself was never popular with the leading Democratic 
politicians. He was popular enough with the working 
people ; but he had no other strength. The politicians 
believed that Wilson would kill the chances of the 
Democrats with McAdoo at the head. America desires 
no dynasty in the White House, thongh the Repub- 
licans are now heading T. R., Jr., who is rich, for that 



211 

place. T. R. left almost three millions of an estate, 
and his children by marriage are worth fifty or sixty 
millions. T. R., Jr., has a very rich wife. We say this 
in order to get the minds of Americans ready for an 
attempt to create a Roosevelt dynasty. 

McAdoo was "dry" and pro-suffrage. The Tam- 
many outfit of New York "had no use for him." 

A. Mitchell Palmer, the handsomest man in politics, 
was frightfully handicapped by coming from Pennsyl- 
vania, being in the Wilson Cabinet and being bitterly 
anti-Boche. 

He was "impossible" according to the politcians. 
W. G. McAdoo had money, and though not of the plu- 
tocracy, could get a big campaign fund; but Palmer 
could get no money for the campaign. 

Then there was "our own Jimmy Cox" of Ohio, 
from Harding's own State, the best Governor Ohio 
ever had, worth "millions" and a great campaigner. 
Cox was "it." 

There were but two possible objections to him: one 
was that he also reputed to be "wet"; and the other 
was that he had a divorced wife living, a cousin of 
Warren Harding's. In all other respects, he filled the 
bill. He could carry Ohio surely. 

They would capture the progressives by naming 
Franklin D. Roosevelt, cousin of T. R., whose wife also 
was a cousin of T. R. It was certainly a fine-looking 
team. 

But the women got the vote. 

Then the Democrats dug up the unpleasant fact 
that the wife of Harding had been "married" before, 
and was a "divorced" woman. This the Republicans 
answered truthfully enough by stating that Mrs. Hard- 
ing was not running for President, that her "first 
husband" was dead; and in fact he had not been 



212 

married to her, and therefore could not have been di- 
vorced from her. This has been shown elsewhere. 

The religious sentimentalists are now face to face 
with this problem — whether to vote for a divorced man 
or for a man who had married a discarded woman. 
They decided quite generally to do what looked best, 
what "public morals" required; they decided to vote 
for the colored man. They were much disconcerted 
about this color business from the fact that the white 
Republicans told one story and the colored Republicans 
anottier ; perhaps, Warren would not put colored people 
into high office at least. 

It was proven that Warren Harding owned brew- 
ery stock; but the sentimentalists swallowed this fact. 
The stock was only three shares anyway and had been 
donated to him for his influence. 

The Democrats figured that James M. Cox, owner 
of two newspapers and of a line of oil stocks, would 
be treated sympathetically at least by American news- 
papers and by the plutocracy. Here they made a great 
mistake. The Associated Press does not like the Cox 
syndicate, end the Standard Oil Company does not 
like the Pure Oil Company. Each desires a monopoly, 
of course. 

More than this, the plutocrats resented the things 
that Cox had done for the workmen's compensation 
acts that have made Ohio rightly famous in all the 
land. Cox had been "too good to labor." 

The Republicans discovered that Harding had a 
printer's union card, while Cox had none ; this they 
used with great effect. Never does the richer man de- 
feat the poorer when the people find the comparative 
facts out. The Republicans asserted that Cox was 
worth twenty millions of dollars and was trying to buy 
the Presidency. In 20 out of 23 Presidential cam- 
paigns, the poorer man has won, since 1828. 



tl3 

Cox himself made three moves that look to many 
now like serious mistakes. 

First, he chased the wild goose in Washington, 
Oregon and California. He imagined that he could 
carry the Coast. This took him away from the East 
where Warren was doing the front porch work. The 
trip around the circuit, getting out to see the people, 
looks well ; but few future candidates will try it. Cox 
made votes out on the Coast; but he lost more votes 
in the East by leaving the battle ground. 

Second, he relied upon but one issue. No candidate 
ever wins with one issue. It is true that the League 
of Nations Covenant was worth all the time that he 
gave to it; but the voters did not see this. 

Third, he asked the Democratic platform men not 
to mention the colored blood of the Hardings because 
it appeared to involve his three children by his first 
wife. He thought of his posterity rather than of his 
country. The Republicans falsely charged that the 
Democrats were secretly using this story; but the 
truth was that the Democrats frowned upon it. 

There were doubtless other Democratic errors. One' 
may have been the failure of Cox to declare himself on 
the wet question unequivocally; he said only that he 
would "enforce the laws." If he had gone either way, 
to say that he disliked prohibition, as Wilson did, or 
that he firmly believed in it, he would have kept more 
votes. It is true that Harding was equally equivocal ; 
but Harding had the inside of the running. 

It is also probable that the Democratic Manage- 
ment at headquarters was incompetent. It had no 
policy; it had no faith in victory; it would spend no 
money beyond what was in sight; it used too few 
speakers and too little ink and paper; it was loyal to 
Cox; but it was the loyalty of a very conservative, 
rich business man who would not risk too much. 



214 ■ 

George White is still in charge of the Democratic 
National Committee affairs; but he lacks steam and 
will to win. He is temperamentally too cautious. 

When Cox got back from the wild goose chase, full 
of wrath that the newspapers had given to him so 
little space, he made a few speaches that drove War- 
ren off the front porch; Warren got a speech from 
Wallace, the agriculture man, that he read out in Min- 
nesota, and that pleased the farmers. 

In the East every week after his return, Cox did 
gain ground; but he was totally in error when a fort- 
night before the election at Baltimore, he predicted 
his own victory, and actually believed that himself. 
A campaigner never can tell what the people are really 
going to do. 

At the Baltimore meeting, a woman judge there, 
after hearing him, said to her neighbors this, "My, 
that was a fine speech; if he were not so bad a man, 
I would vote for him." Asked wherein he was bad, 
she replied, "He has two wives." 

Nine million women voted; perhaps three million 
of them voted for Cox. Except the poor white trash, 
so-called, all the white women of the South stayed at 
home. This is why Cox lost Tennessee. Wherein lay 
the Republican vote? 

In the North, about seven million women voted, 
probably at least one million of these being negro or 
colored, all of whom voted Republican. Of the six 
million others the Republicans probably had, on the 
argument that Cox was a bigamist, morally at least, 
four million votes. 

The women voters netted to the Republicans about 
six million votes, or three million of their total major- 
ity of seven millions. The G. A. R. women, the W. C. 
T. U. women and the women allied with K. C. voted 
Republican generally. 



"' 215 

On the sex question, the women may be counted to 
go for "public morality", so-called — that is, the man 
who is a sex-offender must be outwardly decent. A 
divorce is politically a heavy handicap. Harding had 
not been divorced. In this fashion, the instincts of 
women have gotten into politics. But the women vote 
did not decide the election. 

Where were the other Republican votes 

Many women and some men were resentful of the 
universal draft. The United States is no warlike na- 
tion universally. Many people believe that when it 
comes to fighting, one should have the option whether 
or not to fight — even for his own protection and that 
of his family. This is a very general opinion among 
women. It is called "conscientious objection to war," 
but it is nothing else than self -protective fear, intel- 
lectualized and made hypocritical. 

The man who sets up a conscientious objection to 
his own fighting is a coward ; we ought to have a con- 
scientious objection to v/ar itself; but not to fighting 
when their is war on between right and wrong and we 
are needed by the right. 

These conscientious objectors all thought that 
Warren Harding was really a pacifist; they judged 
this from his war-record, whether truly or falsely is 
not in the present argument. He was the anti-war 
man, and Cox was the War Governor of Ohio. 

The fathers, mothers brothers and other kin and 
friends of the soldiers or the released who objected to 
the draft may have numbered half a million in all, of 
whom perhaps two hundred thousand might have 
voted otherwise for the Democratic candidate. To 
them the Republicans sneered, "Woodrow Wilson won 
the election in 1916 on the slogan, "He kept us out of 
war." Well, did he? 

The fact that the German power went on doing 



216 

things to us, and compelled us to go into war; the fact 
that Theodore Roosevelt and other Republicans were 
much more keen for the war than ever Wilson was; 
the fact that most munitions manufacturers were Re- 
publicans, all these facts were ignored; and these 
people crucified the cause of peace out of a grudge 
against the Government in power during the War. 

Every genuine pro-German in America without 
excepton, whether ordinarily Republican, Democrat or 
Socialist, voted for Harding. The Republicans got to- 
gether on this count every traitor to our country. They 
ought to hang their heads in shame for this; but in- 
stead they think that it was smart. 

Only a few Germans who are "German" from long 
descent voted pro-German, but most of the recent im- 
migrants loved the "Old Country" more than the new. 
This made net at least two million votes for Harding. 

The anti-British voted for him. Wilson comes of 
ancestry direct from England; therefore, he is "pro- 
British", these Sinn Feiners assert. These are the 
people who read the school histories seriously and im- 
agine that our country is still hated by Great Britain. 
These are the people who believe that J. P. Morgan is 
a citizen of Great Britain, which the agents provoca- 
teurs told them. 

There are in the United States many persons ig- 
norant enough to believe that J. P. Morgan and John 
D. Rockefeller own it all ; and both of them are Demo- 
crats when there is a Democratic President in Wash- 
ington. 

This anti-British vote was carefully nursed espe- 
cially by Henry Cabot Lodge, who has written in most 
of his book how terrible the British have been to us. 
He is kept in the United States Senate by the Irish 
Catholic vote of Massachusetts. 



217 

This vote of the anti-British netted Harding a mil- 
lion or so. 

The male negroes of the United States cast about 
three million votes, nearly all of them in the Upper 
South and in the North, very few elsewhere. Every 
such vote went Republican, of course. 

A majority of the farmers of the North are Re- 
publicans on the argument that a protective tariff 
makes the workmen rich so that they pay good prices 
for the farmers' products. It is an interesting argu- 
ment because it catches the gullible. Leaving out the 
tradespeople of the rural districts and others not en- 
gaged in farming, there are perhaps of the men on the 
farms in all ten millions, of whom two-thirds went 
Republican. 

For the whole land outside of the South, the trades- 
people and the jobbers mostly went Republican be- 
cause they have always been told that "a Republican 
admnistration means good prices, big profits and pros- 
perity." Their number is about a quarter of a million. 

The wonder is that Cox got any votes at all. 

The Republicans took the Bible, and the dictionary, 
and the encyclopedia and found converts for any and 
every cause on both sides. They promised sea trade 
to the seatraders and home manufactures to the manu- 
facturers, big prices to the farmers and a reduced cost 
of living to everyone ; they promised lower taxes, econ- 
omy, a big navy, social progress, etc., etc., et infinitum, 
et nauseam. 

But nine million people voted for Cox on the old 
argument that it is the business of the people to sup- 
port the Government, not of the Government to sup- 
port the people. 

What did those who went to Marion see? 

They saw a big office run mainly by negroes, with 



218 

a staff of secretaries writing the daily speeches of 
Harding. 

They saw him read speeches in type that he had 
never looked at before. 

They saw Mrs. Warren Harding running about 
even in the street itself to interview people, not once 
but systematically stopping even the merely curious 
as they went by. 

They saw the great men of the Republican party in 
twos and sevens and with the delegations greatly ex- 
aggerated in the reports, come to the prophet, "the 
Marionette of Marion" as Oliver Herford put it, in 
his home town. 

But they did not see any enthusiasm; they saw a 
system at work; all the enthusiasm was Republican 
political bunk, written in t oorder by the paid prosti- 
tutes of the Republican press. 

We come now to what Wood did to help elect Hard- 
ing, and what the others did. 

Wood went to Marion, and saw the man who had 
beaten him in an unfair fight. He saw a man markedly 
inferior to himself, uneducated, affable, full of prom- 
ises, adroit with the mysterious adroitness of a race 
that has not built the British Empire or the American 
Republic as has his own race — the men from the Brit- 
ish Isles. Wood then released a few friendly speeches 
in his behalf. 

Johnson also was reached ; he was lined up even to 
making speeches for Harding. At the present time, 
it appears that Harding under compulsion of the Sen- 
ate situation, is keeping his promises to him NOT to 
stand for the League of Nations. 

Taft was brought in with Elihu Root; and both 
were told that Harding was for the League with reser- 
vations. Taft as yet has not received any reward for 
his betrayal of the great cause for which he organized 



219 

the League to Enforce Peace (upon the official staff 
of the which now defunct League as a speaker Pro- 
fessor Chancellor served and still nominally serves). 

Only the credulous, however, believe that these 
were the real means relied upon by the Republican 
managers to win the election. 

There was set in operation a system of spies, in- 
formers and agents provocateurs the like of which 
has been known but twice before in the history of 
mankind, once in Rome, once in France, which system 
is still in operation, and is part of the "overhead cost" 
of operating the present plutocratic social order. 

We have no qualms about telling the American 
people the stories invented by those paid agents of 
Satan. They had to do cuttle fish inking of the seas 
in order to conceal their own candidate, to send up a 
very dense smoke screen to hide their own CLOUD. 
They had to enable Mrs. Phillips, the inamorata of 
Harding, to make her getaway. 

But we can save time and paper and ink by advis- 
ing the readers to read instead the stories of crime 
in the Old Testament and then to have these told about 
Wilson and Cox, their wives and children. 

Wilson and Cox, Sodom and Gomorrah were linked 
up closely by these devils. 

The Republicans relied upon money to get all this 
work done. 

They now wish all this history forgotten; but it 
is not forgotten or forgettable. They intend to play 
the same game in the Congressional elections of 1922. 
Let Americans be ready to meet them intelligently 
now. 

We may take as an illustration of their methods 
the work in the Congressional District of Ohio where 
Professor Chancellor has his voting residence, the 
Sixteenth. This District covers four Counties with an 



220 

area somewhat larger than the entire State of Rhode 
Island. It includes the County where William McKin- 
ley lived and the city of Canton in which Professor 
Chancellor has made for all the people many public 
addresses including the Memorial speech before the 
McKinley Club and the public on the occasion of the 
death of Theodore Roosevelt. 

There was to be a new Congressman, for the former 
Republican Congressman Roscoe C. McCullough had 
decided not to try for Congress again but for the Re- 
publican nomination for Governor which he failed to 
get, losing to a far inferior man, Harry L. Davis, now 
Governor. The nomination was won J. H. Himes, a 
young enormously rich war slacker for the Republicans 
and by Captain John McSweeny, hero and wounded 
in the World War for the Democrats. Himes spent a 
million dollars ; but he reported no expenses at all. He 
had over one thousand paid workers in one county 
alone for over three months, who did nothing but run 
around to see individuals and get or keep them in line. 

Captain McSweeny spent eighteen hundred dollars. 
Himes made two or three speeches, McSweeny many. 

Himes had his portrait upon every other telephone 
and telegraph post and upon every billboard in the 
County. He advertised constantly in every newspaper. 
He had not voted in any election for nine years, but he 
represented himself as a very public spirited man 
because he had given money to the Red Cross. 

His paid agents in every county told the people, 
by the whisper route, that McSweeny, who is an 
Episcopalian, is a Roman Catholic. 

So high is the standing of this war-hero with the 
two thousand graduates of Wooster College, Presby- 
terian and Republican, that they elected him President 
of the Alumni Association; but the paid agents of 



221 

Himes went about saying that he was boyish and im- 
mature and without executive ability. 

The result was that where McSweeny was well 
known personally, he carried two counties; but he lost 
the other two, and the election through lying by his 
opponent who had all the money he could possibly let 
loose at work against the better man. His wife 
boasted that "It was worth a million dollars to be able 
to spend two years in Washington as a Congressman." 

Of course, if there had been a Democratic victory, 
there would now be a Congressional investigation of 
this election; but plutocracy makes it safe to buy 
elections. 

Reports from the mountain districts of Kentucky 
indicate that wealth also there did some great work. 
It may be that some investigator will have the money 
and the time and the courage to go into every State in 
doubt in 1920 and find out just how the Republicans 
spent their money. 

In Oklahoma, Jake L. Hamon, whose story we have 
reported elsewhere, now dead under the law of Neme- 
sis, imported from Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and 
Mississippi, some 30,000 negroes to vote for Harding 
— at a cost estimated to have required more than a 
million dollars. That there will be a come-back from 
this in the next election in that State is certain; al- 
ready it has had direful effects upon the general dis- 
position of the farming people toward the Republicans. 
There the Indians, such as could vote, mostly half- 
breeds, so-called like Jake himself, — the oil men, the 
merchants and the negroes voted for Warren Harding. 
It was perhaps the most disgusting exhibition in all 
the States except Ohio. The stench of it has been so 
severe as to spread even to Europe. Famous writers 
and journalists have found Oklahoma in the sun of a 
frightful exposure of demoralization. What with sex- 



9-'>9 



vice, fake stocks, gambling, farm tenantry, negroes, 
half-breeds mushroom oil men, and the endemic mal- 
aris, Oklahoma has had a blow to its reputation that 
will be remembered against the State for many a year. 

We come at last to the last phase of the election. 

D. R. Crissinger of Blooming Grove had been 
brought up as a neighbor with Warren Harding, but 
had remained a Democrat. His racial origin is un- 
certain but his vouching for that of Warren Harding 
raises doubts; but he found that membership in the 
Democratic ranks was a perfect camouflage. Still, 
when Warren got the Republican nomination, and had 
$25,000 to spare, Crissinger saw the light of the Re- 
publican noonday, and went over to Warren. 

Knowing all the people, he organized the whisper- 
ing gallery, tissue paper, vest pocket, blind telephone, 
Sunday sermon, campaign for letting the negroes know 
that Warren had negro blood. This went along very 
well until the people of the countryside who were 
white began to get angry. It so happened that one of 
the negroes who was working this campaign had the 
name of William Chancellor; he s sixty-five years old, 
and black. To the black Republicans and to the White 
Democrats alike it seemed a smart thing by the middle 
of September to try to get the people to believe that 
this William Chancellor, black, was the William Esta- 
brook Chancellor, who was Professor in Wooster 
College, editor of an educational magazine of wide 
circulation in Ohio, and frequently speaking on the 
platform. We have elsewhere described the rest of 
this affair. But the time came for the Republicans to 
repudiate this line of negro propaganda — not so long 
before the election that the negroes who live by their 
ears should hear of it, but just before the election 
when only the whites who read should hear of it. They 
had William Estabrook Chancellor ousted from his 



223 

college chair and from the New York Press Club and 
falsely published in thousands of papers that he had 
retracted that which he had never done. As he him- 
self told the Trustees, he had "ceased beating his 
grandmother." But the Republican Trustees needed 
to find for the Republican party a scapegoat on whom 
to load their own sins, and they unloaded them on him. 

It might be supposed that Professor Chancellor 
would have some remedy; that he might have denied 
the negro blood in Harding; but why should he deny 
what William Chancellor and many others were paid 
by the Republicans to assert? Is truth naught? Not 
until January 5, 1921, did the St. Louis POST DIS- 
PATCH and NEW YORK WORLD special con^espond- 
ent who was putting all his time on this work uncover 
the existence of this conspiracy and of William Chan- 
cellor of Mt. Gilead, who then proudly claimed that he 
had "licked the whte men." 

How many votes were actually changed by this 
propaganda and by the alleged "retraction" of the 
negro story may not even be estimated. Democrats 
say in Kentucky that it stopped the Republican land- 
slide, defeated all the inside work done by National 
Committeeman Hart, and made useless the campaign 
of young Theodore Roosevelt in the mountains where 
the name of his father was popular. Republicans 
claim that it added millions to their vote in the North 
because it was "a dirty Democratic lie." 

Possibly, the Professor himself may have some 
testimony on this point worth looking into — he re- 
ceived some 240 telegrams within two weeks prior to 
the election, and ten thousand letters before he had 
to depart ; during the last fortnight when the Republi- 
cans were most active among the whites, he spent on 
the average of five hours a day in long distance tele- 
phoning with strangers among whom was one man 



224 

who lost his job for lying about what the Professor 
actually did say to him. Professor Chancellor has had 
only one story to tell ; he believed the truth of the Re- 
publican missionary work among the negroes, he made 
his own investigation, he made no statement whatever 
on the subject until he was attacked by the Repub- 
licans themselves and urged by them to lie in order to 
save his own job. This is more fully stated elsewhere. 

But in the final outcome, the Republicans are left 
with a vast expense and with a very rotten record on 
this point. 

"Twas a victory, sir, but it cost them dear!" 

It is possible to win a battle and to lose a campaign. 
The Republicans lost the campaign when they won 
the November battle. They are now exposed to all the 
world as the makers of the first negro President and 
lying about it as well as breaking their promises to 
the negroes. 

In all probability, James M. Cox will long outlive 
Warren G. Harding, who has arterio-sclerosis and a 
blood pressure of above 200. The man who survives 
his enemy has an enormous advantage over him for 
the purpose of terresterial reputation. Cox will write 
the epitaphs for Harding. 

It may even be that the semi-invalid Woodrow 
Wilson, ex-President, will outlast Warren Harding. 

At any rate. Cox and Wilson and Professor Chan- 
cellor have many descendents each, and they will keep 
the memories of the year 1920 green; what persons 
will care anything at all for the reputation of Warren 
Harding after he leaves the Presidency? 

The election of 1920 was made to order; it became 
a vast hysteria; it was thoroughly disgusting; it has 
left after-effects that will last a long time. And it 
placed in the Presidency a man — 



225 

1. Without a program, ashamed of his ancestry, and 

afraid of exposure. 

2. Ignorant of history and international affairs. 

3. Who already has brought down upon America the 

contempt even of the Japanese. 

4. Who has already persuaded America to blacken her 

own reputation by paying $25,000,000 to Columbia 
in South America. 

CHAPTER XV 
MRS. FLORENCE KLING (DE WOLFE) HARDING 

Professor Chancellor wrote this letter to a 
Southern lady at her request; wife of a Justice of the 
State Supreme Court and mother of a Congressman. 
Dear Madam: — 

You say that you have seen Mrs. Harding but can- 
not understand her. You descrbe her as wearing a 
heavy coat of enamel upon her face and as being over- 
dress for her age. It will not be possible for me to 
tell any lady what is the inside explanation. But I 
can clear up some matters, and keep within bounds of 
polite correspondence. 

I ask you to think of Madam Sarah Bemhart, who 
has three gifts, viz., personal beauty, dramatic genius, 
and executive ability, including no small talent for 
business. As you know, great changes have taken 
place in the character of Madam Bernhart in the 
course of her life. Early instincts have been sup- 
pressed, and the best in her has come out splendidly. 
By race, she is a French Jewess. How much of her 
blood is really Hebrew and how much Gallic, no one 
knows. 

The Klings were Rhinelanders ; some believe that 
they were originally Jews. 

Florence developed at an early age an inability to 
go to school; she became a horsewoman, a race-track 
and skating rink frequenter. In another social en- 



226 

vironment, she might have gone upon the stage. She 
always had a gift for getting on with men. Where 
others wasted what they got in this fashion, she saved 
her money. Her father was a banker, but she early 
left home. Her only child was bom when she was 
about twenty. She asserted that Harry de Wolfe was 
its father, and he agreed to call the boy his son. But 
she tired of Harry; and they were separated by the 
Court, though no marriage was proven. 

She saw in Warren Harding what no one else saw 
— great possibilities. Obviously, she was right, and 
every one else was wrong. He is now President-elect 
of this land. Like her father, she could read character ; 
but in this instance she surpassed him. 

Once that they were married, Warren became her 
hobby; she poured out her life for him and for the 
newspaper on which she worked like a slave. Her 
neglected son died. 

Whatever her race, she has had one power, that of 
persistence; she has stood for every fault of her hus- 
band, who in turn has surrendered to her calling her 
The Duchess — surrendered everything except certain 
habits, such as midnght revels, cards, women and 
drink. She has run his business, paid his bills, ad- 
vertised him, praised him as the greatest man living, 
run his political correspondence, written his speeches 
even. 

Being six years older than he and far abler, she 
has had him in tutelage. Often she has been ill, often 
discouraged, but never baffled. 

You say you do not understand how she could have 
taken a man of color? Though she is of European 
ancestry, she is as dark as her husband. The color 
has meant nothing to her. She knows nothing of the 
Southern views of the negro, and will never be able 
to understand your views. She has never seen in the 



227 

mass the genuine blacks. At the same time, she has 
admitted that fear of her father made them avoid 
parentage. 

You have probably seen the interview in which she 
described herself, not naively as her husband has so 
often described himself with his "printer's rule and 
union card," but shrewdly. She says that she is 
naturally a business woman, without any interest in 
philanthropy, loves beautiful things, likes action, de- 
lights in getting things done, does not prefer much 
domesticity; and is something like a man. She is a 
woman of the world, and more than a match for her 
husband who is a man of the world. 

I venture to remind you that Martha Washington 
"made" George, that Mary Todd "made" Abraham 
Lincoln, and that often what we ascribe to the man 
is to be credited to the wife. 

Warren Harding is a good elocutionist, has a big 
figure, is solemn and reticent, and was born to order 
for her management. 

You speak of the moral character of her husband; 
it as as good as her own; and his sex-character is as 
good as that of Benjamin Franklin and many another 
man of fame and power in business and politics. As 
to "the social taboo", it is wholly for the women to 
decide that. The Northern women will probably 
swallow the situation. 

We must number Florence Kling among the 
prophets. She has won. 

Very respectfully, 

PRESIDENTS AND GOVERNMENTS 

To a former Student: 

I appreciate very heartily what you have written 
to me; many of my students have written to me in 



228 

the same spirit. What you say is a very great com- 
fort to me in these circumstances . But I find some 
remarks of yours that, f you will permit me to do so, 
I should like to comment upon briefly. 

Government is simply a device to enable people to 
live together peacefully in law and order; it exists by 
force. The State is its chief form for men, but Church 
and School and Industry all govern to an extent each. 
It puts man into power, some good, some bad; but 
thereafter they govern. 

When the Reverend Doctor John Timothy Stone 
led his "lynching bee," as you call it, he was exercising 
in School and Church — for the College of Wooster is 
a church school — his undoubted legal right to govern 
the institution. The only questions are two. Did he 
act according to law and order, or not? And in the 
long run will the denial of the right of academic free- 
dom serve the interests of the nation and of the church 
schools in particular? He denied my right not to sign 
a lie that he desired signed for the advancement of 
the Republican party. He invaded my citizenship. He 
denied all the rules and regulations governing the col- 
lege and governing ordinary relations between man and 
man. He denied to me the ordinary rights of the 
Anglo-Saxon law, being himself a red Kelt. He con- 
ducted himself like an angry chief of a clan offended 
by the unwillingness of a clansman to accept his feudal 
overlordship. He said that I was "his man." I replied 
that I was "an American citizen." 

It is far from true, as some assert, that "the powers 
that be are ordained of God" in the sense in which 
lords use the statement, which is falsely translated 
for their benefit. A text without its context is a 
pretext. In this passage, Paul is considering the prin- 
ciples of right, the master ideas, as opposed to the 
wicked notions of rulers, and what he actually said 



229 

was this : "The ideas that endure are ordained of God" 

as they undoubtedly are. That text, falsely translated, 
would have kept slavelords in power forever. The 
powers that exist in a democracy are ordained of men, 
and they change frequently. 

The Reverend agent of the Republican party in the 
Wooster College Board of Trustees has been there but 
two years. Trustees come and go in a democracy. 
Like the ambitious man in the Scripture, the word 
translated "rich" means "bounder", the Reverend 
politician came "running." It is of such enterprising 
men, full of pep and business beyond their capacites 
to understand, that Jesus said, "It is easier for a rope 
to go through the eye of a needle than for a bounder 
to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." 

It is a deliberate attempt to indoctrinate youth with 
wicked and silly reverence for men in power that 
causes the schools to teach youth that all Presidents, 
Governors, Senators are fine men. The American 
people have decided otherwise. They refused to re- 
elect as President more than half of them all; and 
even so they have re-elected some that should not 
have been tried even once. The apotheosis of men in 
power must be offensive to the Almighty. Rich per- 
sons, pastors of big churches, famous men, generals, 
it cannot be doubted, are in many instances very bad 
and deserve reprobation, not worship. As for the 
recent idea in America of lese majeste in respect to the 
President, it has one purpose — to enable scoundrels to 
terrify their adversaries. 

When you wish to know the truth, to get the facts, 
in order to conduct your life wisely and rightly, go to 
the place where the facts are ; never trust those inter- 
ested, the great men or their agents or clerks, for the 
truth is not in them. 

For myself, I delight in remembering Ben Frank' 



230 

lin; there was a price on his head for many years, 
offered by the great. Yet he was the smartest man 
this continent ever saw, and one of the most useful to 
America ; if the King that was on the throne whereon 
he should never have sat one moment had won, Ben 
Franklin would be remembered in history as a very 
wicked rebel. 

You comment upon the fact that at the worst any- 
way America is superior to Russia. I doubt very much 
whether Harding is superior intellectually to Lenine. 
It may be that in future histories Lenine, who is a 
fine scholar and a Russian patriot, who is organzing 
a new type of human society, will be called the George 
Washington of the New Age. It is true that Lenine 
has set wars on foot; but if we have wars with Japan 
and with Mexico and with Great Britain, wars that 
are ripening now, whose fault will it be? 

God forbid such wars ; which is why I am FOR the 
League of Nations. But the man who has been the 
figurehead in the political campaign against the 
League of Nations, will be held responsible for future 
wars if they come during his lifetime. Harding played 
the game for those who are willing that America 
should go to war again. 

Yours faithfully, 
To a Genealogist: 

I was much indebted to you for your suggestion in 
November that I send a man to the Wyoming Valley 
and also to Orange County, N. Y., to look up the asser- 
tions of the Harding "genealogists", so-called. He has 
spent two weeks in the Pennsylvania field and one 
week in the New York field, and he has found no 
evidences that any Ohio Hardings were ever in either 
Wyoming Valley or Orange County. In view of the 
many murders in the Wyoming Valley the notion ap- 
pears to be to charge every hiatus in a record to the 



231 

Indian massacres. In this way, the Wyoming Valley 
has come to be populated with hundreds of thousands 
of ghosts who never saw it in the flesh. This man 
also went over to New London, Connecticut, trying to 
find traces of Huldah Tryon there ; but failed. That 
also appears to be a myth. 

I am convinced that there was a Huldah in the 
Harding ancestry; she appears to have left her mark 
upon the descendents; but in appearance, it is the 
mark of Indian and not of white blood. Over in 
Georgia, there s a town called Tyrone, and it is inter- 
esting to note that when the first of Huldah's descend- 
ants got her name, they spelled it Tyrone. This town 
was settled in part by people from County Tyrone in 
Ireland. It was the center for the Shawnee Indians, 
who were moved in a lot to middle Ohio. Just why 
Warren Harding should prefer as ancestress a woman 
who had the horrible blood of the Tyrone monsters 
of the Carolinas rather than the respectable blood of 
an Indian woman, one wonders. That Colonel Edward 
Tyrone to whom he is trying to link himself through 
Huldah was the frightful beast who sent Traitor Bene- 
dict Arnold on his raid into Virginia that cost Thomas 
Jefferson the lives of his wife and one of his daughters 
and also his country mansion, which the traitor burned. 

The Harding "genealogists" are very inexpert. 
They do not seem to understand that it is not worth 
while to establish an ancestry unless that ancestry is 
honorable. So far they have failed to connect them- 
selves with any worthwhile family among the old 
English, the French Huguenots or the Germans who 
emigrated in 1850 — all splendid people. They have 
found some Dutch and Scotch forebears of good repute. 
It is as clear as day that they have but one notion — 
that is, to establish all White Blood, of any kind and 
any country. 



232 

It really gets them nowhere to prove, which they 
have not yet done, that they have New England blood ; 
there have been plenty of white rascals in New Eng- 
land, negroes and Indians also. What the genealogists 
have done includes some very ridiculuous things ; they 
show that in three successive generations the Harding 
men married at the ages of eighteen, twenty and nine- 
teen years, and had children one year later. Did they 
marry? Were there any such men? 

They publish no genealogy for the Dickersons; 
yet Elizabeth was their mother. They appear to be 
respectable and intelligent white people. They publish 
one back generation for Mary Ann Crawford, the 
grandmother of Warren, who married his grandfather, 
Charles A. Harding, who undoubtedly had negro blood. 
It seems that her mother was a Crawford. These Craw- 
fords claim Indian blood. The famous William H. 
Crawford, commonly known as "Jack Crawford," who 
was burned at the stake, dying an heroic death, left 
no children ; every pioneer thought that he had Indian 
blood. The back generation gives them the Dutch 
blood of the Van Kirks; this is a good name; but it 
has no ancestry, and may have been taken by persons 
not of Dutch descent. 

We are unable to escape the portraits of the ancient 
worthies whom Warren claims as his forebears; nor 
the memories and pictures of his people in the flesh 
still living in Harding land. The picture of George 
Tryon Harding I. represents a terrible person, like a 
pirate indeed, whch they say that his father really was. 
This George Tryon (or Tyrone) )was born in 1790 and 
died in 18G0, and spent the first thirty years of his life 
in Virginia, so they say. But Professor Chancellor's 
own people live in that very part of Virginia by the 
thousands, and they have no records of any such fam- 
ily. Tidewater, Virginia, had thousands of slave? who 



233 

had run away from their masters, who were the con- 
stant prey of pirates, smugglers and slave traders, 
and it so happens that there is a tradition of Hardings 
who were French West Indian slavers; this happens 
to be exactly what the Blooming Grove people on the 
Avhite side of the feud say was the origin of the Amos 
Hardng tribe that migrated there in 1820. These 
neighbors insist that Amos spoke French. 

Of course, much of this popular interest in the 
Hardings springs from total ignorance of the princi- 
ples of heredity. The popular notion is that a man 
springing from a white woman and a negro man would 
be half -white and half-black. Then if this man took a 
white wife, their children would be quadroons, three- 
fourths white, one-fourth negro. This is the stage of 
George Tryon Harding H., perhaps. 

So they go on in their classification — mulatto, 
quadroon, octomoron, hexdecaroon, steentharoon, un- 
til they think that a descendant may be all-white vir- 
tually because the fraction of negro blood becomes too 
small to count. 

But heredity works in no such way, and all laws 
based upon the octoroon as being seven-eighths white 
and only one-eighth negro are absurd. 

Traits generally descend almost in toto. They either 
are or are not in the succession; and they may dis- 
appear in a child to reappear in a grandchild or great- 
grandchild. 

I remember well a very brilliant negro mathe- 
matician in Washington, coal black, whose father was 
a white man, a brilliant attorney at the bar, unmarried. 
The mother was not a coal black negress but a hybrid, 
passing as a quadroon. This man had inherited in 
toto the black skin from some remote forebear of his 
mother. 

How then explain the saffron lilies — the persons 



234 ■ . - 

with negro blood who are light lemon yellow? Was 
not the pigmentation diluted? It does not pass as 
white or as coal black. The answer is simple. Most 
pure American negroes are not coal black themselves ; 
only the Senegambians are coal black, and the North 
African pure Moors who are not negroes at all. 

A colored man may inherit a black or dark brown 
skin, a straight, white right angle face and head, 
planitoid feet and a love of work, a big chest and a big 
abdomen; that is three Gold Coast negro traits and 
three Saxon traits. He v/ill be a husky, ambitious, able 
man ; but this does not qualify him to be the father of 
children by a white woman. Yet this man will cer- 
tainly aspire to a blood white wife, being just as unfit 
to marry a brunet Caucasian, of course. 

Or take the case by traits, and say that the father 
may transmit "A-b-C-d-e-F" traits: A, strong; b, 
weak; C, strong, etc., while the mother is a carrier of 
"a-b-C-D-e-f" traits. 
One child may inherit like this: 
a-b-C-d-e-f. 

But another may inherit 
A-b-C-d-e-F. 

But it is altogether unlikely that any child will inherit 
traits 

A-B-c-d-E-f, 

for the sufficient reason that strong leads of B and E 
are not in their germ plasms within recent generations. 

Apply this to Warren Harding. He has a strong 
musical interest, playing several instruments. So had 
his mother, while his father comes in part of a musical 
race, the negro. But search these ancestries, both 
mother's and father's, in Warren, and there is no case 
where the forebears were strong executive managers 
of men. Warren is subservient to an extreme degree, 
subservient to his wife and to all strong natures with 



235 

whom he comes into contact. Now the Indian is not 
subservient. But looking into the line of his brothers 
and sisters, we find one of the children at least — the 
brother, who is strongly marked by personal inde- 
pendence and a distinct desire to be left alone to live 
his own life, to be out of all this wrangle over the an- 
cestry, and it is easy to see that he has a very dif- 
ferent force of hereditary and instincts from those of 
hs brother, Warren. 

The policewoman sister helps to interpret Warren ; 
most of the time she has not lived with her husband, 
though not actively hostile to him during the nearly 
twenty years since they were married. Is this the trait 
of an all-white woman? If there is any person with 
more conflicting traits than this sister, she would be 
hard to find. She likes to corral criminals and the 
accused. At the same time, the police records show 
that she has been very sympathetic with wronged girls 
in the city of America, where more illegitimate chil- 
dren per thousand of the population than any other 
in the land — a record as true of the whites there as of 
the colored women. She takes marriage lightly for 
herself — though strictly virtuous — and lightly also for 
these unfortunate girls. (How this sympathy works in 
her is shown in her recent advice to Justice P. Stafford 
in a matter of the Cole divorce case, which forced 
Warren to disavow the act and send her to a Battle 
Creek sanitarium. Mrs. Cole is a Cuban Mestizo, with 
whom Mrs. Votau boarded while acting as police- 
woman) . 

Remembering the parental disregard for marital 
forms and ceremonies may not this indifference to 
marital relations be classed with inherited traits and 
traced to George Tyrone Harding II., and Elizabeth 
Dickerson ? 

I must close with this final statement ; my belief is 



236 

that Warren Harding and his wife have been allowed 
to get into the limelight in order to emphasize the im- 
portance to the American people of knowledge of 
anthropology and heredity for our own future and as 
clinical material for the study of our mose serious 
social questions of marriage and sex generally. 

The social taboo upon these matters is off so long 
as they live in the White House. 

Scientists are seeking some keys to his intellectual 
positions and why he prefers brunets so close to him. 
His wife is brunet. George B. Christian (Cristiano, 
Portuguese, translated) , his private secretary, who can 
"kill" correspondence and deny opportunity for an in- 
terview, is a brunet. D. R. Crissinger, of Blooming 
Grove, a very intimate friend, is brunet. Why does 
he avoid blond Anglo-Saxons and blond Saxon Ger- 
mans ? And, why * * ♦ ? But scientists have too many 
questions of this kind to set down here and now. 
To a Legal Friend: 

Your letter was duly received among thousands on 
thousands. In this vast outpouring, only a dozen or so 
of all the writers have censured me for what I have 
done and failed to do; and your censure takes such a 
peculiar form that I am answering it in detail fully and 
out of its due order in time. You say that I managed 
my case badly and should have conducted my course 
very differently. In this censure for "failure so to 
spring the attack on Harding" and yet save my "college 
chair" for my "later work," which you set up, you 
make several assumptions. 

1. You assume that, being fully informed as to the 
existence of the negro organization, including one Wil- 
liam Chancellor, black, aged 65 years, I should have 
countered at once say, as early as July. This assump- 
tion fails because it is false as to TIME. Until Janu- 
ary, 1921, I was unaware of the existence of WillJam 



237 

Chancellor, I did not know who wrote the papers about 
Harding's negro ancestry. 

2. You assume that as early as (say) August, I had 
proofs that Warren Harding is colored. This assump- 
tion also is false as to TIME. Until December, 1920, 
I had not heard of the Wilbur-Smith murder case ; nor 
until late that month did I learn that Georgia Harding 
Hamon, wife of murdered Jake L. Hamon, was War- 
ren's own cousin, and a negress and where Harding 
got his campaign money. 

3. You assume that the Wooster College Board of 
Trustees in ousting me from my chair as full professor 
for life did so on grounds after proof that I had circu- 
lated malicious libels of Warren Harding and followed 
the college rules in so doing. 

I circulated nothing prior to that meeting when I 
was removed without a hearing. Here your assump- 
tion that the Wooster College Trustees acted legally 
and regularly is false; they acted as Republican poli- 
ticians, as a branch of the Republican National Com- 
mittee, in order to cover from the public their own 
use of William Chancellor in getting the negro vote. 
This assumption of yours is false because they did not 
act as college trustees, but as Republicans aiming to 
win. 

4. You assume finally that I, a college professor, 
was engaged in a poltical game; that I had something 
to "spring;" that I staked my college chair to win or 
lose. 

This is so totally false an assumption that it is dif- 
ficult to deal with. Why should I have lied as to my 
belief regarding Warren Harding — to the Wooster 
College Trustees? Why should I have tried to save 
myself by lying? A college chair has pleasant fea- 
tures. The Wooster College faculty declined unani- 
mously to ratify my ouster. The Dean who was used 



238 

as a tool by the Trustees has resigned, being utterly 
unable to reconcile himself to their perversion of a 
document that they purloned from me through him 
into a "retraction" of what I never did. He cannot yet 
reconcile the three virtues, viz. : 

1. Truth; which he told. 

2. Loyalty to Wooster College ; which he showed. 

3. Honor as a patriot; which he betrayed. 

He is man enough to live without being Dean; no 
other confession would have been enough ; he gave up 
the second highest college office. 

A college professorship that requires a man to sign 
anything that a Board of Trustees demands reduces 
the professor to a slave. The Roman Senators and 
plutocrats bought and sold Greek teachers as slaves. 
Shall the American Senators and plutocrats make 
slaves of our college teachers? 

You are a lawyer; I have known you many years. 
My impression is that: 

1. You should review Greenleaf on Evidence; 

2. Read fewer Republican and plutocratic news- 
papers. 

You cannot understand my case and my course un- 
til you rid your mind of what the newspapers said. 
Are you aware that The New York Times sent out to 
Marion to investigate the negro situation a reporter 
who had been in this country only two years, educated 
and trained in Norway? This man told me that he 
could not tell a colored man from a Chinaman. I asked 
him what investigation he made; and he said that he 
had asked Harding's secretary! Yet The New York 
Times printed a statement that Professor Chancellor 
had circulated sheets against Harding for months ; and 
did not know William Chancellor from William Esta- 
brook Chancellor. Notwithstanding which facts, it 
printed on its front page the statement that it had 



239 

made a thorough and complete investigation and that 
Professor Chancellor denied, in October, what he did 
in the preceding months; that is, my dear sir, what 
blxick William Chancellor did for pay for the Republi- 
can party to get negro votes. 

Possibly the fact that the McCormicks, of Chi- 
cago and Washington, once gave $5,000 to Wooster 
College and might give more made it seem judicious to 
get rid of Professor Chancellor. Rev. Dr. Stone had to 
think of the money involved. Wooster College is 
heavily in debt! But is Gold — God? 

Yours sincerely, 

THE PARENTS OF HARDING 

To a Fellow Psychologist: 

You may remember my article on the Hypermoron, 
in which I diagnosed the hypermoron as being the vic- 
tim of morinoia, habit-mindedness. This article was 
originallj'' printed in the New England Journal of Edu- 
cation, Boston, but was extensively reprinted, one issue 
being in the LITERARY DIGEST. For a while all the 
world talk of it. 

You have asked me to describe Warren Harding 
intellectually to you from my personal study of him. 

Let us begin with his parents, and especially, his 
mother, for Warren is more like his mother than like 
his father which is fortunate for America. 

Elizabeth Dickerson was born with the same notion 
that TEMPLE THURSTON advocates in the now 
famous novel, THE GREENBOUGH, and that has been 
advocated by such novelists as Herrick in Together, 
and the woman who wrote Three Weeks, Elinor Glyn, 
a notion that would fill the world once more with bas- 
tards. Her notion was that she had the right to 
motherhood, no matter what. On this basis she united 



240 

herself to the soldier, George Tryon Harding, who was 
a year younger than herself. When pregnant she woke 
up, at her mother's and father's loud lamentations, to 
the full-grown men's and women's notion that mar- 
riage is a condition sine qua non to maternity. But 
George Tryon did not see it; therefore, she invented 
the lie that they had really been married, but she did 
not know when or where. On that bass, she bore to 
him TEN children, three boys and seven girls, a most 
kaleidoscopic lot, three of them black and most of them 
are good specimens of the human race. 

Now the hypermoron is an adult who thinks in 
the terms of fourteen years normal mentality, which is 
the trouble with these novelists and the free love ad- 
vocates generally. The traits of the hypermoron are 
these, viz.: 

1. No self-alienation; they cannot see themselves 
as others see them. 

2. They cannot understand full-grown minds. 

3. They follow habits and routine. 

4. They obey others. 

5. They live in the nearby facts and have no princi- 
ples of action. 

7. They love companionship and cannot live happily 
alone. 

8. They follow their instincts implicitly. 

9. They live in their senses, often are musical and 
artistic. 

10. They cannot conceive of human society, the 
nation. 

11. They are full of memories. 

12. They have no long foresight, and never imagine 
themselves forward into the future. 

13. They are full of fears. 

14. They may have wit but they never have a sense 
of humor. 



241 

15. They are self-sacrificing to others near them. 

16. They love home and kin. 

17. They are amiable until crossed ; then they show 
violent temper. 

18. They are talkative. 

19. They are naive. 

The hypermoron is the near-adult, the first-class 
fool, the almost full-grown man. It is harder to dis- 
criminate the hypermoron from the adult than any 
other variety of fool. 

Such was Elizabeth Dickerson. 

Such was not her husband, so-called. 

He has managed to live on others skilfully. His 
daughter, Abigail, has supported the little Marion 
home in the cottage on Church Street, and Mrs. Hard- 
ing has allowed him to have rent-free an office in the 
STAR BUILDING. 

He is no hypermoron but a full-grown adult, 
shrewd, cautious, cruel, lazy, vain, an imposter in re- 
cent years, a divorced man now, bold or cunning as 
the case has required. Though very ignorant, ignor- 
ant even of medicine and surgery which he professes, 
he is far from a fool. On the contrary, he has 
negotiated a crooked course with marvelous skill. The 
hypermoron never really lies ; he does not know how, or 
see why it may be useful temporarly, to lie ; but no one 
takes the word of this man, George Tryon Harding. 

The mother had frail health but great power to 
work; the father has had fine health, but no disposi- 
tion to work. 

If you will consider the lies that Harding told dur- 
ing the campaign, you will see where to draw the line 
and find in Warren the traits of both parents. Most of 
us have lived down and risen out of the period of hyper- 
morinoia. We can remember when we fought the in- 
stincts in ourselves and defeated them. 



'AO 



Warren, who believes in the high protective tariff 
and in the Monroe Doctrine and in subservience to the 
great, who lets others decide for him, is, just now, at 
fifty-five years of age, trying to evolve into adult man- 
hood. 

Very truly yours, 
TRUTH 

A Letter to a Christian Friend: 

You are the pastor of a church supposed to be dedi- 
cated to Jesus Christ, and I have your letter accord- 
ingly. What is it that Americans do to men who tell 
the truth ? Do they boil them in oil ? If so, when the 
souls arrive at the Gates of Pearl, distilled from the 
boiling oil of their mortal bodies, what do the Angels 
of the Gates say to them? Is it a bar to the Gates 
that one tells the truth ? 

But suppose that these souls only believed that they 
were telling the truth — that they tried to find the 
truth in every way they could, but were baffled by 
other men in this earth. Still they told only the truth 
as to their belief or refused to lie about their beliefs. 
What do the Angels of the Gates say to such souls ? 

In point of reason, can the Angels of God damn to 
the fires of eternal punishment any persons who for 
truth give up home, children, kindred, property, coun- 
try and all familiar things? If Angels can do this, 
are such the Angels of God who creates men to love 
truth ? 

Is there any virtue higher than Truth by the test 
of which the Gates of Pearl alone open? If so, name 
it. You object to my telling the truth about my be- 
liefs. What is it you wish me to do? To lie? I prefer 
to take my course. If I have made a mistake about 
what the Angels of the Gates will do, it is a mistake 



243 

SO vast and terrible that every really good man has 
made it. If all such go to Hell, I shall have excellent 
companionship there. 

You say that my telling the truth has damaged the 
cause of Christian education. If so, I am content that 
"Christian" education should be damaged and utterly 
annihilated. If a college dedicated to Jesus Christ can- 
not stand the truth, then it ought to perish — Even 
Christianity itself must perish unless it is the truth. 

I notice that Jesus said of Hmself — "I am the 
Truth." I notice that Pilate asked— "What is Truth ?" 
I may be wrong ; but my own guess is that the Walls of 
the City of Gold are laid upon one clear, solid, uni- 
versal, uniform rock and that this rock is Truth. If 
I am wrong, and Truth is not the rock on which the 
New Jerusalem rests, then I must go below, deep 
enough to find the rock ; it may be Hell is on the rock 
of Truth. But I repeat; my guess is that the Gates 
open to those who love Truth. 

If this is error, and I must submit to be called, 
"Raca, thou fool," by you, I venture to ask you to read 
the rest of the passage. If only fools love Truth, and 
live and die for it, then I am content that God made me 
a fool. . 

Death and Hell with Truth are better than any 
Heaven to be won otherwise than by Truth. 

Yours, sincerely, 

WHAT IS A WRITER? 

To a Fellow Member of the New York Press Club : 

I received your letter and thank you for being plain 
with me. You regret that I was expelled without a 
hearing and without notice from the Club of which 
both of us have been so long members ; but you see no 
way to straghten the matter out. 



244 

I see by the papers that Warren Harding has de- 
clined to go to New York and address the Club because 
of your internal troubles. 

Your Club, that once was mine also, will have more 
troubles before I get through with this thing. 

You ask me to try to forget that I ever was a mem- 
ber and say that "the Club is in bad ordor just now 
anyway." Perhaps so. But the public regards me as 
properly blacklisted, and I propose to pursue my policy 
of letting the public know the truth, which will take a 
long time for a man who is forbidden to use the mails 
even for private letters. You will, however, get this 
letter, for there are ways to come through. 

You tell me that my income from writing was not 
very important and that probably I can get ai' ther 
teaching position anyway. 

Evidently, though you do know me quite well per- 
sonally, you know nothing about my financial affairs, 
except that I have written many articles that have 
been published in newspapers and magazines. 

First and last, I am a writer. In the middle, I have 
done other things. 

The Republican Trustees of the College of Wooster 
have undertaken to destroy a writer — that is some 
undertaking, even for multi-millionaires who own the 
present Government. 

Writers live by what overthrows other men; their 
troubles are their assets. They sell their books and 
articles because others are interested in their lives and 
opinion. The more trouble they have, the better their 
writings sell. 

Only God Himself can overthrow a writer; He can 
overthrow even plutocrats through writers. By writ- 
ing, Woodrow Wilson broke Wilhelm HohenzoUern. 

To keep me alive God needs to do just three things, 
that is all: 



245 

First, keep my brains at work. 

Second, keep me human. 

Third, see that I have food and shelter and a very 
few necessaries of life. 

After doing this, God can trust me to do the rest. 
But He must keep my mind going, keep people inter- 
ested in humanity and see that I have the means of 
mere life. 

Then I will write and write. 

The mllions hate and distrust the millionaires; the 
whites fear the contamination of the blacks. All men 
desire peace and comfort, and most men desire justice. 
Therefore, they listen to what the writers say. I fore- 
see an effort to colorize America. I foresee that the 
next demand by the many millions of Afro-Americans 
will be this, viz.: 

A Force Act for the South in order that the negroes 
may gain control once more of the State Governments 
of the South. This will mean at least seven million 
more black votes of the men and women, and the sup- 
pression of the white Democrats of the South. The 
negroes do not care about plutocracy; they are will- 
ing to obey the business overlords provided that they 
can have whte women for wives. That is what race 
quality means, the defeat of the white South and the 
drowning out of the white blood, which may God for- 
bid! 

Once let the negroes vote generally, and there will 
be an avowed negro for the Presidency, who will pledge 
placi g many negroes in high office — on the Supreme 
Cour' bench tself, in the Cabinet, in the Senate, not 
men ly one or two, but many. Through these negroes, 
the plutocrats then can work their will upon the rest 
of us. 

That is the game, and that is the game the New 



246 

York Press Club played when it threw me out without 
notice. 

Which raises the question what American journal- 
ists really now are. 

I have a pretty fair knowledge of Amercan journal- 
ism, magazines and books. Some men have a more 
intensive knowledge, of course, of particular enter- 
prises than I have, but my general knowledge is fairly 
complete. I have been in every large city in America 
and in most of those of Canada, and in many Euro- 
pean cities also. 

Some time ago a New York paper of wide circula- 
tion, asked me to write for them an account of my 
actual personal relations with journalism and replied 
that it was ten times greater than they had supposed. 
They wished me to work for them at a salary that was 
ridiculous. In order not to destroy my market for the 
future, I refrain from particularizing now; but it may 
amuse you to know that the writers in the New York 
Press Club who moved to fire me out came from a 
paper that offered me only a few years ago $150 a week 
to go to Europe for them — and all expenses, of course. 

I cared a thousand times more about being of a New- 
York journalistic standing than about being a pro- 
fessor in a Republican Presbyterian College. 

I have published thirty-eight books and have edited 
for publishers more than a hundred other books. 

One of my students once undertook to make a list 
of all my signed published articles and gave up after 
tracing three thousand. 

Because I was a writer, the College of Wooster em- 
ployed me, and for no other reason ; and because I was 
a writer, they fired me, and for no other reason. I 
wrote an article that was published in the Times- 
Annalist, in which I advocated gold once more for com- 
mon circulation; and that was resented by the plu- 



247 

tocracy. A man who believes in honest money and in 

nothing else is a Bolshevist-anarchist-revolutionist- 
lunatic NOW because the bankers of New York desire 
all the gold for themselves, and the rest of us are ani- 
mals feeding at THEIR tables. 

Shades of Andrew Jackson! Shades of Albert 
Gallatin ! Great shades of Honest John Sherman ! 
Pretty soon it will be a crime to wish to OWN a home, 
because then one who is honest will be able to laugh at 
the LORDS of Land, Still, then the plutocrats will 
find a way to steal a man's home just as they stole my 
professorship and my membership in the New York 
Press Club. 

But who are the journalists? 

A few are themselves millionaires — like Charles H. 
Grasty. 

A few write so well that they write rather freely 
like Sir Philip Gibbs. 

A few are so scholarly that they are respected 
enough to have the entree to almost any paper or 
magazine of their own party — like Talcott Williams, 
who knows everything, 

A few write on papers that are, though rich, free 
and honest, like the New York World, 

A few papers try to be free, like the NEW YORK 
TIMES, 

A few are free, though not rich, like the CLEVE- 
LAND PLAIN DEALER, 

But most journalists 

1. Earn so little that they live from hand to mouth 
and do not dare to think ; they write to order. Only a 
very brave man writes what he thinks unless he has 
TEN THOUSAND dollars in cash in a good bank, 
where the plutocrats do not know that he has the 
money. 

Such a man often cannot sell what he thinks. 



248 

2. Are so young and ignorant that they have no 
machinery with which to think. 

3. Or have come so recently into America that they 
do not know us ; there are too many foreigners on our 
papers and magazines. They work cheap and destroy 
the wage and piece-rate scales for native Americans. 

Let me tell you a few instances of fact: 

1. The business manager of a great paper received 
his discharge by telegraph, went to see the owner at 
his home, who refused to see him. To his death later, 
this journalist never knew why he had been discharged 
after years of success. 

How can a profession be free when such things 
happen ? 

2. A freelance writer, blacklisted by several great 
papers, sent a dispatch through regarding which the 
city editor wired, "That is a peach of a story!" 

He waited and waited and waited two months for 
payment, and then got a check for $300. But the^ 
never used his story. It cost him $150 just to wait. 

3. A man sent to a very great newspaper a fine 
article ; it was accepted ; it did not appear. The writer 
read the paper diligently, and at last a paragraph 
came out. Then another. In the end, it was all 
printed; but it had lost all its force. And the busi- 
ness office never paid him. 

4. A man wrote an article that soon appeared. He 
was sent to a distant city ; and he was never paid. 

5. A man was ordered to go for a determined sum 
to a foreign land to write up some newsy stuff. He 
sent back one article that appeared ; then he sent five 
others in succession that never appeared. He asked 
for an explanation and pay, which he never got. The 
paper had changed his busness manager, and that 
ended his claim unless he sued, which would have 
caused him to be blacklisted. Later he found that an- 



249 

other writer on the paper had objected to his articles 
because his own opposed his views. This writer at 
home, who did not know the facts, killed the stuff from 
the field, and BROKE the outside man, who did know. 

I might give many other cases. 

You say that such things are the ordinary condi- 
tions of human life; they are. Newspapers should be 
superior to ordinary methods and conduct. The world 
needs truth ; it needs truth far more than it needs shoes 
and oatmeal and coal. 

In the present situation with slaves for writers, 
with frightened men with eyes bulging lest the front 
office or the downstairs office or the capitalist behind 
the works GETS him, the newspapers are not telling 
the truth to us Americans. 

"First of all the truth" is a blind to fool us. They 
put this on the corner of their front pages; but the 
truth itself is not in them. 

What is the remedy ? The ownership of the papers 
by the men who write them, and then an enlightened 
public opinion to back up the writers. 

You will say that the country newspapers are so 
owned. Possibly in some instances; but while the 
Associated Press is itself plutocratic, the country news- 
paper can be truthful only in the "hay fields," where 
they operate for the "hay" facts. 

America is an empire of great cities. Forget the 
State lines. What counts is what New York, Chicago, 
San Francisco, Washington tell us. You can test a 
great civilization by its great cities, and nowhere else. 
The farmers cannot save the nation. The cities rule 
us. To them the farmers send their best of all kinds 
and sorts — their sons and daughters included. 

I now ask the merchants of the OBVIOUS who run 
most of our newspapers to observe and consider that a 
CLOUD looks like MASS and SUBSTANCE; but it 



250 . - ^ .. 

floats and is lighter than air, for it floats high, and the 
aviators fly through it. 

It was OBVIOUS that some man named "William 
Chancellor" was being used to circulate tissue paper 
sheets, etc., throughout the land from Pittsburgh to 
Chicago. 

It was obvious that this name was attached to the 
title of Professor of Political Economics, Wooster 
University. 

It was not obvious that the first wife of James M. 
Cox was herself a Harding and that therefore HE 
would not back such a propaganda. 

It was not obvious that Professor William Esta- 
brook Chancellor, Professor of Politics, NOT Political 
Economics, which is illiterate, was too much the 
friend of James M. Cox to go into any such thing, and 
had too much common sense to do it anyway. 

It was not obvious that this was amove of the 
negroes themselves, backed by local Republican leaders, 
such as D. R. Crissinger, and known to Harding him- 
self, in order to get the negro vote all out and the 
sympathetic white vote with it. 

It was not obvious that the argument to Chancellor 
of Wooster, that in order to save his chair he must call 
other men liars, when he believed them to be telling 
the truth, would not work. The Trustees of Wooster 
did not go to Wooster that afternoon in order to oust 
Chancellor; they went in order to get him to sign a 
lie as to his beliefs. Therefore, the New York Press 
Club, under orders direct and indirect, from Medill 
McCormick, of the Chicago Tribune, 

Myron T. Herrick, of the Dayton Journal, 
Theodore N. Noyes, of the Washington Star, 
Edward H. McLean, of the Cincinnati Enquirer 

and Washington Post, 
Dan R. Hanna, of the Cleveland News, 



251 

on the ex parte evidence of one Reverend Doctor John 
Timothy Stone, that the Wooster College Board of 
Trustees had ousted Chancellor after trial, which was 
a lie, and believing in the obvious, which was another 
lie to the effect that he had "retracted" that which he 
never did, expelled him instanter, which was an offense 
to Anglo-American law. 

When the right time comes, I propose to get this 
fact before the bar of American public opinion. In the 
meantime, I watch with interest the investigation into 
the affairs of the New York Press Club. 

If that turns out well, I intend to ask the Club this 
question: How does it happen that there has arisen 
in very high public life at last a man who for the first 
time in American history is so peculiar that a writer 
must be PREVENTED from writing his life, prevented 
by all the vast resources of the Amerocan government ? 
No other President ever objected to anyone's writing 
his life. 

It is said in reply that the writer intended to 
prove that this President has a peculiar ancestry. Is 
this President sacred like Nero in a Golden Palace? 
Can truth be written of all white men, but not of men 
NOT ALL WHITE ? Is Negro Blood sacrosanct from 
publicity? Are the negroes our overlords? It is ob- 
jected that the truth would cause public indignation or 
worse. No, not the truth in th words, but the placing 
of such a man in supreme power, that is the cause of 
this fearful dread; it is exposure that they fear. 

But if this man is not exposed, he will be re-elected, 
and others like him and worse will follow. The plu- 
tocracy needs rubber stamps and tools. 

Very sincerely, 
To an Amateur Anthropologist : 

There are, I believe, less than twenty men in 
America whose opinions on race questions are worth 



252 

any thought at all — men who have grounding in the 
science, and who have made field studies. The notion 
that head forms may change within one generation is 
too baseless in fact to be considered seriously; race 
is permanent, lasts untold generations. I have seen 
in the Near East and here in America persons who 
look exactly like the representations upon the Egyptian 
monuments, and others like those upon the Assyrian 
monuments. 

Some so-called "races" are not races at all. And 
some apparently different "races" are really one race. 
The red and black Kelts are one race, differing in 
hair color only; often of Keltic twins, one is red, the 
other black. Why? Possibly the race was formed 
two (thousand) years ago by combination of Mediter- 
ranean black stock and Teutonic blond stock ; but, how- 
ever formed, it is now permanent. The genuine Saxons 
are one race, appearing with either blond or tawny 
hair. In each of these cases, the cephalic indexes re- 
spectively are always the same — 80°for male Kelts, 
and 78° for male Saxons. This index is as reliable 
as the law of gravitation or the law of atomic valence. 
Almost all-white Americans until 1880 were either 
feudalistic, clannish Kelts or Anglo-Saxons, a special 
offshoot of the Saxons, with Anglo impusiveness and 
love of freedom and energy forced into Saxon friendli- 
ness and sympathy, or else Kelto-Anglo-Saxons and 
hybrids, good when the Anglo elements remained 
dominant. 

When a man sets up to be ALL-WHITE, he must 
establish hs race or races scientifically by measure- 
ments and historic records in order to satisfy an an- 
thropologist. We are dealing here with truth, not with 
pride and assertion. There is no more reason for tak- 
ing at face-value the genealogical assertions of a sus- 
pected family than for taking their promissory notes 



268 

at face-value without inquiry; and so far as the in- 
terests of the human race are concerned, there are a 
thousand reasons why the stocks in a man are more 
important than his property assets. Every fertile hu- 
man being is a potential father or mother of ALL 
LATER humanity. Assume that a man has three 
children, nine grandchildren, twenty-seven great- 
grandchildren, eight-one great-great-grandchildren, he 
will have in a thousand years no less than 
500,000,000,000 descendants; in other words, if the 
earth's civilization improves and races intermarry 
freely as equals, which many advocate, his blood may 
be in every human being of that period. It so happens 
that Amos Harding, of Blooming Grove, has estab- 
lished so far a ratio of four, not three, for his descend- 
ants. I consider this interesting and important to 
America. Within a few centuries, every American of 
that period may have Harding blood. 

There are already known to be 20,000 d6escendants 
of one Francis Powers who came to this country in 
1656. It happens that they display a remarkably high 
average of abilities, much in the same line; he evi- 
dently was a carrier of dominant traits. But in the 
Harding instance, the dominant traits appear to have 
come down through Huldah Tryon, said to have been 
the mother of Amos. Naturally, I am interested in 
Huldah and her descendants. One thing is certain — 
every man who has many descendants may be sure 
that his descendants at some future time will either 
come into sever ecompetition with her descendants or 
will unite with them. Moreover, the present case is 
one where every living human being is interested, for 
the present character and ability of Warren Harding 
now involves the welfare of all mankind. 

The day has passed when biographers will say that 
a President had such and such a father and such and 



254 

such a mother, and let it go at that. We shall take the 
interest in such matters as the subjects of monarchial 
dynasties take in their sovereigns. We are learning 
that hereditary traits are ninety-eight per cent of life. 
When a family is notorious for doing no reading, for 
not entering into the methods of a civilization of the 
written record, and known public law, we shall be fore- 
warned. When it is notorious for being short-sighted, 
for having only near-range views, we shall be fore- 
warned. When it is notoriously subservient, we shall 
be forewarned. You cannot force into a brain any- 
thing for which the tissue as prepared by heredity is 
incompetent to get. 

Yours sincerely, 
THE CONSTITUTION AND THE PRESIDENT 

The latest apologist for the President now in office 
is one William H. Crawford, who describes himself as 
"a life-long Democrat," who has known him for twenty 
years. This writer has an article in THE WORLD'S 
WORK for May, a magazine that in its editorials of 
the same issue deals manfully with the inability of 
the President to formulate a policy in foreign affairs. 

Mr. Crawford ends by describing the President as 
"A man under whom the power of the executive will 
voluntarily fall lower than it has for the last twenty- 
five years. Incidentally there are many who believe 
with Mr. Harding that the reduction of Presidential 
authority is urgently necessary for the preservation 
of our democratic form of government. 

If the Presidency under Harding falls lower, any 
lower than it fell under McKinley and Taft, God save 
the American people! 

Earlier in the article he said, "Furthermore, Mr. 
Harding has no desire or intention to dominate the en- 



255 

tire government. We will have for the first time in 
many years three separate, distinct, and independent 
branches of the Government." 

Now this statement is nothing less than subversive 
of the Constitution itself. There was no intention to 
make the President ''coordinate" with the other offi- 
cers. It is true that the Presidency is confined by 
"checks and balances," but the President is not set up 
as merely the equal with others. A rigid examination 
of the Constitution and of the statutes carrying it out, 
and also of the decisions of the United States Supreme 
Court shows this, viz. : 

As compared with the President, the Supreme 
Court, which is nominated by the Presidents, con- 
firmed by the Senate, is more powerful than any man 
in office — this is the peculiarity of our American 
Federal system. 

As compared with the Senate, through his veto, he 
equals seventeen Senators. 

Through his poM'er to nominate or withhold nomi- 
nations and his power to make recess and ad interim 
appointments, the President is ten times as powerful 
as the Senate. 

Through his power to initiate treaties and to man- 
age all foreign affairs, he is ten times more powerful. 

Through his "implied war powers," he is infinitely 
more powerful. 

Being Commander-in-chief of the army and navy, 
he is all-powerful as compared \vith the Senate. It is' 
true that he cannot "declare war;" but Polk showed 
that he can "make war" and that the Congress must 
back him up. Only one power really confines the "war 
powers" of the President ; that is, public opinion. 

In respect to the House, the President is again, 
through his veto, equal to many Representatives — 
mathematically consdered, to seventy-three of them. 



366 

But the House has only one-fourth of the power of the 
Senate anyway. The President is very much more 
powerful than Congress, on the whole. In respect to 
Mrs. Harding, the writer of this apology says: "There 
is evidence everywhere that she has been a helpmate 
and advisor to the President in his upward climb." 

Then he adds, "As an admirer of Wilson I was more 
than exasperated at what I consider the unjust 
calumny heaped upon him during the campaign for 
partisan political purposes and was inclined to attri- 
bute it partly to the nominee of the Republican party ; 
consequently, I came to my task certainly with no 
prejudice favorable to the new President." 

Professor Wlliam Estabrook Chancellor, when at 
Marion, himself heard Mrs. Harding tell some visiting 
ladies that she was "afraid that those dreadful stories 
about Mr. and Mrs. Wilson were true." In a letter to 
one of his friends, he said that he was within fifteen 
feet of her when she said this, standing on the side- 
walk, talking to visitors in a motor car. It was 
abundantly in evidence that the agents provocateurs 
"of the Republicans, both men and women, were in the 
closest relations with the Hardings. 

Early in this article, Mr. Crawford said, "Previous 
to his nomination, my study of him was superficial, 
for, to be perfectly frank, I have never considered that 
he was sufficiently important as a national figure to 
merit a closer scrutiny." There is a notion frequently 
expressed that in the Presdency men often display un- 
expected powers. Perhaps so. But in that office, they 
never display knowledge that they never had. The 
Presidency does not give to a man information and 
science. When the cold historians of later times tackle 
this man, they will write something worse than the 
expressed fears of this apologist. They will recount 
the ruin his election brought to the world. 



CHAPTER XVIIT 

PROFESSOR CHANCELLOR AND THE PEOPLE 

Objection has been made to one taking part in poli- 
tics by Professor W. E. Chancellor on the ground that 
he is "ignorant of the American people." This is ex- 
actly the opposite of the true objection, which is, that 
he knows the American people. The only cause why he 
is not now out lecturing among the people before large 
audiences is because the present Administration is 
afraid of him and is illegally using its power for its 
personal politics. If Professor Chancellor does not 
know the American people, who does? Notice these 

facts : ,,dMjM 

1. Ohio: Lived in the State from birth tiir twelve 
years of age; and in adult life nine years. 

2. Massachusetts: Studied in Worcester, Amherst 
and Cambridge ; taught in Watertown ; ten years. 

3. New Jersey: City School Superintendent in 
Bloomf ield and Paterson ; nine years. 

4. New York: Married a native of New York City, 
where he lived five years as student and teacher and 
editor. Member of New York Clubs. Many business 
connections. Wife, a niece of Henry Ward Beecher and 
related to other famous families. 

5. Washington, D. C. : City School Superintendent, 
Chairman Architectural Commission, university 
teacher; three years. 

6. Connecticut: City School Superintendent at 
Norwalk four years. 

7. Nebraska: College President at Lincoln, one 
year. 

257 



258 

8. Illinois: Taught in Chicago at the University 
of Chicago two summers and has visted the city two- 
score times. 

Professor Chancellor has given courses of lectures 
for six weeks in the States of Washington and of Iowa, 
each. He has given lectures in nearly every State of 
the Union, including every county of Vermont, fourteen 
counties in Pennsylvania, etc. He has travelled nearly 
400,000 miles in the United States. His ordinary mail 
even when in the qUiet life of a college professor 
averaged 20 letters a day, or 6,000 a year ; he received 
over 10,000 letters in his political campaign. 

No, the trouble with Professor Chancellor is that he 
knows too many persons and too many facts, knows 
America too well. What we desire is to let the Ameri- 
can people know the truth about his treatment by the 
politicians of the present Administration. We are cer- 
tain what the people will think, feel, say and do. 

Is this the American form of a Dreyfus case? 
France saw the light at last. 



CHAPTER XIX 

ACCEPTED GENEALOGY 

The Family Genealogy of Warren Gamaliel (Ban- 
croft Winnipeg Harding) as prepared by W.J.Harding, 
of Keystane, Iowa, and handed to the staff cor- 
respondent of the New York WORLD as the authentic 

genealogy. When shown by 

to on October 18, 1921, 

he said : "As a man born a Virginian, I can have but 
one answer : white people in Virginia did not give such 
names to their children, nor have so many wives per 
man. 

1. John, b 1567, d 1637, wife unknown. 

2. Richard, b 1595, d 1657, two wives, second name 
Elizabeth (last name unknown). 

3. Stephen, b 1623, d Feb. 20, 1698, wife Bridget 
Estance (French). 

4. Abraham, b date unknown, d Nov. 23, 1694, wife 
Deborah (last name unknown) . 

5. Stephen, b 1681, no other record. 

6. Abraham, b June 14, 1720, d 1788, wife unknown. 

7. Abraham, b 1740, d date unknown, wife Huldah 
Try on (Tyrone?). 

Children of John were Richard, Amos, John, 
Lemuel, Oliver, Joseph. 

Children of Abraham and Deborah were Israel, 
Stephen, John, Mercy, Lydia, Deborah, Thomas. 

Children of Stephen, wife unknown, were Abraham, 
Stephen, Thomas, Israel. 

Children of Abraham, wife unknown, were Abra- 
ham, John, Amos, Lemuel, Oliver, Bice. 

259 



260 

(According to the investigation of Professor Chan- 
cellor and of the WORLD, all the foregoing "genealogy** 
is faked) . 

8. Amos, b March 10, 1764, d July 10, 1839, wife 
Phoebe Tripp, married 1794. Migrated to Ohio, 1820, 
by which time "they" had seventeen children. (The 
record shows that one of them was born November 18, 
1795, and another March 15, 1796. It also shows that 
Phoebe bore one child in 1785 and the last in 1813. But 
the neighbors say that the man had two mates, which 
explains the phenomenon of two children born within 
117 days of one another! The second mate, who was 
the widow, was a comparatively young woman, at the 
death of this interesting Amos.) 

The names of the children of Amos were Abigail, 
George Tryon, William Tripp, Solomon, Mordecai, Rice, 
Wealthy, Ebenezer S., Benjamin F., Huldah Jane, John, 
Chauncy, Mahala, others unknown to genealogist. 
Abigail, b 1785, d 1861, m James Sterns. 

George Tryon, b June 5, 1790, d Jan. 9, 1860, first 
wife Ann Roberts, b date unknown, married 1812, d 
1815, second wife Elizabeth Madison, b 1800, d 1869, 
married 1816. 

William Tripp, b July 15, 1792, Hindale, married date 
unknown ; second wife Mary Otis, married datt^ un- 
known. 

Solomon, b Jan. 31, 1794, d Feb. 17, 1872. Three 
wives, dates of marriages unknown. Their names were 
Anna Wheat, Eliza Lathrop, Susan Mason. 

Mordecai Rice, b Nov. 18, 1795, d March 15, 1870. 
First wife Susan Newton. Second wife Martha Steel. 
Dates of marriages unknown. 

Wealthy, b (note the date and compare with above) 
March 15, 1796, d 1887. Two husbands, dates of mar- 
riages unknown ; names, Joseph Baker, Hiram Wells. 

Ebenezer S., b 1799, d 1882, Two wives; dates of 



261 

marriages unknown; names, Mary Webster, Naomi 
Wilson. 

Benjamin F., b 1801, d April 13, 1838. Wife Anna 
Jackson. Date married unknown. 

Huldah Jane, b Ppril 10, 1805, d Sept. 13, 1877. 
Married Amos Webster, date unknown. 

John, b July, date unknown, 1807. Married Alvirah 
Dunham, date unknown. 

Chauncy C, b Jan. 14, 1809, d Dec. 8, 1880. Married 
Rachel Story, date unknown. 

Mahala, b 1813, d date unknown. Married Richard 
Fields, date unknown. 

(This very remarkable Amos who had sevcnlf^^'ii 
children, the birth dates and names of the third, fifth, 
eleventh, fifteenth and sixteenth being unknown to the 
genealogist, had no less than nineteen son-in-laws and 
daughter-in-laws for the known twelve children, and 
he had ninety-eight known grand children by these 
twelve children. It will be observed that in but few 
instances is the date of the marriage known. The 
date of ^b^ marriage of George Tryon (Tyrone) II., to 
Elizf beib Dickerson is also unknown; v/hy?) 

CtiUiren of Abigail were Amosa, Justice, Lydia. 
Rhoca, Silas, Mercenam Otis, Wealthy, Polly, Phoebe, 
(Stearnes). 

Of George Tryon by Ann were Huldah, Phoebe Ann ; 
by Elizabeth were Oliver, Perry, Charles A., Miranda. 

Of William, who though having two wives appar- 
ently died young, Eloridge T., Eliza F. Rice, Lois U., by 
which wives unknown. 

Of Solomon, who had three wives, A. Major, L. 
Lothrop, Tary, Alexander L., Delilah, Charlotte, George 
Washington, Harrison, Alfred Avery, by which wives 
unknown. 

(Some of these names bear out the contention that 
Amos came from Virginia, as the neighbors say.) 



362 

Of Mordecai, by two wives, Thos. Newton, Jas. Har- 
vey, Lucinda, Susan J., Mordecia, Rice, Rosalinda (who 
was coal black) ; Edward S., Louisa J., by which wives 
unknown. 

Of Wealthy, by two husbands, Har. A., Emily Ann 
Stephen P., Emmans Artemissa John M„ Susan, Wil- 
liam, Sidney, Corydon, Charles E., Mary E., by which 
husbands unknown. 

Ebenezer S., by two wives, Wealthy, Charles, Cle- 
ment, Mary, Ebenezer, Lewis N., Lydia, by which wives 
unknown. 

Benjamin, by Anna Jackson, Benjamin E., Philena, 
and two names unknown. (He died young, which may 
have saved the life of his own wife.) 

Hildah Jane, by Amos Westley L., Welcome A., Wil- 
son J., Hilah Jane, William W,, Celestia, Zoradia, Amos 
C, (Webster). 

John, by Alvira Thomas D., Lucius T., Merrit, 
James, Benjamin, Solomon, Mary, Sarah, Martha. 

Chauncy, by Rachel Nehemiah, Horace H., Harriet 
S., Jotham D., Amos J., Hiram R. 

Mahala, by two husbands, the name of one un- 
known, James E., Maiy A., Mahala S., Lorenzo, George 
Washington, Joseph E., Artemisa J., John D., Julius 
E., Lucius T., Wilson W., Margaret A., Richard A., 
Florence C. 
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND COMING WARS 

The left wing of the coalition styled in November, 
1920, "the Republican party," told the people that the 
League of Nations meant wars and more wars in which 
America would be compelled by the Covenant to en- 
gage. The right wing denied that the Republican 
party was opposed to the League, and asserted, as did 
the Democrats, that the League meant peace for all the 
Nations that joined it as concerns one another. There 
are now forty Nations within the League; the larger 



363 

ones not in it are the United States, Russia, Germany 
and Turkey. Smaller ones not in it are Austria and 
Hungary. 

Now what are the facts at the time that this law 
suit is being prepared? Premier Hughes, of Australia, 
is urging the entire British Empire to arm itself on 
sea and land against the United States, and the 
Dominion of Canada Government is debatng whether 
to follow Australia; while the British Imperial Gov- 
ernment at London has announced that if America 
adopts the policy of "ship for ship, man for man, with 
every other nation," the British will none the less pur- 
sue even as against the United States, their policy of 
"twice as great as any other nation," 

At the present time, these are the wars threaten- 
ing or now preparing, ivz. : 
Out of the League In the League 

of Nations versus of Nations 

1. U. S. A Great Britain 

2. Germany France 

3. Russia Poland 

4. U. S. A Japan 

5. Turkey is now at war with Greece 

6. U. S. A. is trying to bulldoze Mexico, 

which may mean "armed interven- 
tion." 

7. Russia is fighting Persia. 

This means that there are now going or threatened 
no less than seven (7) wars. But there is NOT ONE 
WAR going or or threatened between Nations within 
the League as against one another. 

In 1914, 1915 and 1916 most Americans insisted 
that the United States would never become involved in 
the World War; but the Lusitania and the one-ship-a- 
week order of the German Kaiser in January, 1917, 
brought us in all the same. 



264 

What are some of the causes leading to wars now ? 
1. Japan resents our international attitude on the 
race-question. We have race-equality in the United 
States for Caucasions, Ethiapians and Indians ; but not 
for the Japanese and Chinese. Yet the yellow men re- 
gard themselves superior alike to the Indians, the Ethi- 
opians and the Caucasions. 

Japan must find room for a truly surplus popula- 
tion. They have 60,000,000 in an island less than the 
area of New England, New York, New Jersey and 
Pennsylvania, with a poorer range of natural resources 
and a worse climate. Manchuria and Mongolia are im- 
possible because Nature forbids a large population 
there. China is already overcrowded. Japan desires 
to expand into the Philippines, into Mexico and into 
the United States. Victory in war is her only way 
of escape. 

Japan believes in the Divinity of Kings and in mili- 
tary power, and hates our democracy and looks upon 
our claims to being "peaceful" as hypocritical. She 
means to get the help of Great Britain and to whip 
us thoroughly. 

Japan regards our claims of race-purity and race- 
supremacy for the whites as hypocritical and sees in 
our President a colored mestizo like the Presidents of 
most of the South American Republics. 

Japan grew rich through the Russo-Jap and World 
Wars, hates and fears Christendom, is heathen at 
heart, and anxious to try out her strength against the 
boastful white peoples. 

2. Great Britain resents the superiority now of 
New York in the commerce of the world. Canada is 
trying to clear with London direct through Quebec in- 
stead of as now through New York. Great Britain can- 
not destroy the United States, but by victories on the 



266 

sea and on the coasts she might destroy the prestige of 
the United States as the foremost of all nations. 

Canada resents the Young Tariff Act furiously, as a 
direct attack upon her western farmers. She is trying 
to get "nationality" by having an ambassador in Wash- 
ington, which we have already questioned on the 
ground that she has no independent sovereignty, and 
therefore cannot have diplomatic recognition of am- 
bassadorial or even ministerial grade. 

There is, so it is declared by some, no real similar 
ity between the people of Great Britain and those of 
the United States other than blood and a few such mat- 
ters as language and literature. The entire British 
Empire recognizes social inequality — nobles, middle 
class and peasantry. The British are an aristocracy 
with the pronounced social ideas and customs of an 
aristocracy. The United States may have an economic 
aristocracy, but everything else is democratic. The 
nobility and upper classes of the British Empire from 
England out into every possession would rejoice to seT 
American democracy set back by a war-defeat. 

And, unfortunately, upon this side of the United 
States, there are many persons, many forces, many 
causes making for war with Great Britain. Among 
them are these, viz.: 

Oil in Mexico and elsewhere. 

Sinn Fein. 

Pro-Germanism. 

Tradition regarding the War of Independence and 
the War of 1812. 

Sensational newspapers trying for circulation. 

American tariffs. 

3. Russia will go on fighting for many years to 
come while she eases out into a totally different social 
state from that under the Romanoffs. We may be- 
come involved in such warfare, however, sincerely we 



266 

seek to avoid it. We are after international trade, and 
the masters of such trade will not stop at so small an 
obstacle as the objection of humble persons against be- 
ing soldiers in their wars of business. 

Analysis similar to these might be made of the 
other wars now brewing, while the Harding Admini- 
stration tries out his revolutionary notion of a Secretary 
of State carrying all the burdens of foreign policy with- 
out direct responsibility to the people and the chief of 
the Government evades all the burdens and over- 
throws all the precedents. 
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA GOVERNMENT 

A man is known by the appointments that he 
makes. Warren G. Harding has appointed as District 
Commissioner a man now seventy years old, who has 
been a candidate for this high office in Washington 
continually for over thirty years, the overlord of the 
colored people in the largest population of colored peo- 
ple of all the cities of the world, Timbuctoo included. 
Born and reared in the District, two years in attend- 
ance at a Catholic school, with no other education — 
he has never voted, for, much as Vice-President 
Coolidge was astonished at this information, no native 
resident of the District can vote; yet, calling himself 
"a Democrat," he bolted Cox and supported Harding, 
to the extent that talk in Washington can support any- 
one. His power is due to his control over the blacks in 
Washington, which in turn is largely due to the fact 
that he is of enormous size, weighing in his prime 350 
pounds. He owns real estate connected with the night 
life of the National Capital, and can afford under- 
ground passage to the President if required. 

Roosevelt tried to suppress him ; Taf t laughed at 
him; Wilson made his life miserable by trying to en- 
force the laws against him ; but now he is in power over 
the police and the teachers and everyone else. 



267 

This man will have charge of the expenditures of 
twenty and more millions of dollars a year. He is so 
ignorant that a few years ago, he made a protest 
against the teaching of algebra and of psychology in 
the public schools as a waste of money. The Republi- 
can party and the President can make this man use- 
ful in many ways to themselves. He has long been a 
tool of the District grafters in real estate, contracts 
and other corruption. Of course, he has ability; as 
every political boss must have. His name is a joke, and 
disgraceful — James F. Oyster — but his present power 
will make his appointment a serious matter to Ameri- 
cans. He is crude, profane, a heavy drinker, vile, and 
in all ways an example of the "powers of darkness," 
but Harding likes him. 

Toutfini. 



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